The University of South Carolina can’t afford the Affordable Care Act.
Due to a bevy of state-mandated expenses and the cost of implementing Obamacare, the university has raised student tuition by 3.2 percent (about $342 per year), The College Fix reports.
The health care law requires big employers to extend health insurance to all employees that work over 30 hours per week. According to budget data released by USC, implementing the new healthcare program will run up a bill of about $4.5 million.
“That’s a huge chunk of money for our system to have to come up with,” said USC spokesman Wes Hickman, adding that implementing Obamacare is just one of a handful of policy changes that the government is mandating, without helping the university foot the cost. Other such “unfunded mandates,” according to Hickman, include health and retirement benefits and employee pay raises. Taken together, the new mandates will cost the university close to $18 million.
The vote by the university’s board to increase tuition comes after USC President Harris Pastides approached legislators earlier this year to see if, on condition that the university freeze the cost of tuition, they’d be willing to increase “base funding” for the university and help cover state-mandated pay raises and insurance benefits, The Post and Courier reports. Though Pastides’ tuition-freeze proposal didn’t come to fruition, Hickman noted that the university plans to revive the conversation next year.
According to a spokesman for the state’s governor, Republican Nikki Haley, it’s nothing short of a “tragedy” that the burden of paying for Obamacare has now fallen on the shoulders of USC students.
