The Reddy Room

Since the gubernatorial race, I have stayed away from political endorsements for a simple reason—: I believe one politician telling the citizen how to vote for another politician is an assault on self-governance.

Even though I came out of the election cycle with a very poor opinion of Ralph Norman due to his lies, personal attacks, and distortion of his record, I kept my opinions to myself.

However, Ralph, in an interview a couple of days ago, continued the same false narratives against me even though this was a contest in the rear-view mirror. Not very smart, Ralph. It forces me to respond and clarify that the voters rejected you not because of me or the establishment not wanting you (by the way, you are the establishment), but because of your record and abysmal lack of results after being in office for 20 years and running for various offices for a few additional years.

You continue to claim I was a "plant" by the establishment that kept you from becoming Governor. During the debate, you further implied that the establishment was Alan Wilson. I must be really stupid to be a plant with my own money. Don't you think that if someone planted me, they would fund me in some way? Also, after you said you were not a career politician and would take out the establishment, did you not turn around and endorse Alan? While my vote count was only a couple of points behind you, I did not endorse any of my "planters," did I? In case you have not figured it out, here is a more realistic view of why the people rejected you:

1. You claim you are "Mr. Conservative." Yet in your 2 decades (including 1 decade in the US Congress), there is not one single conservative bill that you sponsored or even co-sponsored. The only 2 bills you were associated with were a Medal of Honor bill and a co-sponsor for renaming a post office in Hilton Head. Instead, you spent most of your time on ideological opposition to bills so you could run up your conservative voting score with outside organizations like Heritage Foundation and NCU.

2. At the beginning of your tenure in the US Congress in 2017, the federal debt was $20 trillion; federal spending was $3.98 trillion annually, and interest on the debt was $260 billion annually. Fast forward to the end of your tenure in 2026, and the federal debt is $39 trillion (double), federal spending is $7.4 trillion annually (almost double), and interest on the debt is $1 trillion (quadruple due to financing more of the debt and higher rates). That is a record you partially own. Far from a conservative record. Organizations like Heritage and NCU issuing statistical voting data should not define your record. Instead, your record should be defined by results for people of this state, especially conservative results like smaller government, less taxes, less regulations, and bureaucracy.

3. In the 2024 Presidential election, not only did you endorse Nikki Haley over President Trump, but you were also the only member of Congress to do so. At the time, you said that the party needed "new vision" and "new leadership" at the top. In the Post and Courier opinion piece, you further said that Trump was the "outsider" who had become the "insider."

When Haley referred to Trump as "unhinged" and "Commander in chaos," you continued to stand meekly with her instead of denouncing her.

Today, you claim you are a big Trump supporter.

4. Finally, you were badly complicit in the decision to locate a solar panel plant using hazardous chemicals a few hundred yards from a school in Fort Mill. You co-chaired the Federal solar caucus with a far-left loony Democrat and yet claimed you were not involved in the Silfab solar decision in your district. You took campaign donations from the Silfab lobbyists; you openly solicited local authorities to give them a property tax break, and you included a massive tax break for Silfab in the big, beautiful bill. When residents had a town hall to complain and express concern for their kids, you blew them off. Shortly thereafter, when there were 2 back-to-back hazardous leaks, you distanced yourself from Silfab entirely. That is not leading with courage. We all make mistakes. Owning a mistake is what separates a leader.

Good luck, Ralph, as you seek yet another office. Perhaps if you came clean to us voters and were honest about your record, then we would know that you were sincere about change and wanting to do something for the people of this state. As long as you keep stonewalling and blaming various conspiracy theories for your lack of results, we know to expect more of the same.

Free Speech Friday

This week's topic: Health Care in South Carolina.

In this week's post, I discussed why many South Carolinians believe our health care system is broken and outlined a framework for reform.

Now we want to hear from you.

Have you struggled to find a primary care doctor? Faced long wait times? Been overwhelmed by medical bills? Felt like just another number in a large health system?

Share your story in the comments.

Whether you agree or disagree with the ideas presented, your experiences help bring the conversation beyond policy and into the lives of real South Carolinians. The best ideas often begin by listening to the people living with the consequences of today's system.

As always, keep the discussion respectful. We welcome different viewpoints, and want to keep the conversation moving forward.

The floor is yours.

On the gubernatorial campaign trail last spring, a high-frequency concern was health care. Of course, there was great concern over the cost of health care, but people were also discouraged that the days of the family doctor and the personal attention were fast disappearing. Many of you complained about dealing with large, sterile health systems that were often regimented, uncaring, and costly. You were right. Helping me understand this space was the work done by two great local physicians, Dr. Marcelo Hochman and Dr. Brian Cuddy.

My study of the issue confirmed what I had been preaching on the trail—the system is broken and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, one brick at a time. South Carolina has ever-increasing health care costs and is in the bottom 10 states for health care outcomes.

The first step to reform is rebooting the health care infrastructure by separating the MUSC academic/research side from the hospital/clinical side, privatizing the hospital/clinical side, and reforming state policy to favor local community hospitals and independent medical practices. This is the opposite of what we are doing today.

The statistics are alarming. South Carolina has one of the highest uninsured rates in the nation, and some 22 percent of SC residents have medical debt in collection. Over 60 percent of residents have chronic disease due to rapidly disappearing primary care, especially in rural areas. What is driving this rapid increase in cost with decline in outcomes? Of course, there is never just one reason. However, a big contributor is a state that completely lacks any kind of health care strategy and a health care infrastructure that not only endangers people's well-being but also creates massive financial risk for the taxpayer in the process.

A traditional American health care infrastructure is built around local community hospitals and local physicians providing personalized care to their patients. This system of local care is supported by a central academic hub that provides highly specialized subspecialty expertise that cannot be provided locally for difficult cases. The centralized academic hub also conducts clinical research, supports innovation in medicine, and teaches the next generation of physicians and researchers.

Due to its specialized nature and the resources needed to support leading-edge research and teaching facilities, the academic hubs typically receive state and sometimes federal support. In South Carolina, that academic hub was supposed to be MUSC, a public state institution created by state law. It worked for a while until MUSC went rogue due to a combination of bad governance, lack of strategy, and lack of oversight.

Today, MUSC has undergone "mission creep" and transformed from a teaching/research institution to a sprawling publicly funded hospital system operating or affiliated with 18 hospitals statewide. This transformation has happened through taxpayer funding and debt that has allowed MUSC to acquire hospitals, build hospitals, and acquire physician practices throughout the state, crowding out community hospitals and converting independent physician practices to MUSC-employed physicians with centralized protocols and productivity targets they must meet. Since 2010, six rural hospitals have closed, and more are at risk.

The 2024 U.S. Department of Health and FTC study found that hospital mergers consistently raise prices for the consumer while pricing becomes opaque and service becomes less and less personal and more commercial. Promised improvements from "scale" or size rarely materialize. What makes this worse in the case of MUSC is that much of the hospital-side growth is being funded by massive debt, which has doubled to more than $1.6 billion. Whether the taxpayer has technically signed on to the debt or not, believe me, as a state institution we are on the hook.

Even more concerning, this MUSC behemoth now has revenues of over $8 billion, which is about one-half the size of the state's general fund budget annually. As a state institution, financial problems with MUSC can boomerang onto the taxpayer. Remember the VC Summer nuclear project that backfired onto the taxpayer to the tune of $10 billion due to a lack of governance and oversight. We learned from that, right? Wrong!

MUSC has only one governing board of 16 (14 Legislature-appointed and 2 Governor-appointed) that manages both the academic side and the hospital/clinical side. Given the complex financing involved in acquiring hospitals, building hospitals, acquiring practices, and taking on massive amounts of debt, there must be some strict qualifications for the board members, like experience in capital markets, large-system finance, mergers, and acquisitions. Wrong again!

The board consists of seven medical professionals, mostly retired or practicing physicians and dentists. The other nine are "lay" people who could be donors and friends making major, complex financial decisions with taxpayer money. This is my wheelhouse, and I am intimately familiar with the risk of leverage and the consequences when managed by unqualified people playing with OPM (other people's money), which can be just as addictive and reckless as the real drug.

During the campaign, I said the Governor should have a functioning cabinet with a Health Secretary who understands not just strategy but finance as well. MUSC needs to be first split into two governing boards—one for the academic side, which is a different skill set, and the other for the hospital/clinical side, which is a risk-return business with financial implications that can boomerang on the state.

The academic side should focus on restoring MUSC to a Tier 1 institution from a middle-of-the-pack Tier 2 and maybe even Tier 3 institution nationally. Research funding from the NIH (National Institutes of Health) is often a measure of the academic strength of an institution. MUSC's research funding is a fraction of leading public institutions like UNC, which attracts NIH research grants that may be as much as four or five times higher. No reason for this. Let's get an academic board that can deliver results and compete to be the best research, teaching, and specialty medicine institution in the nation. This part of MUSC should continue to receive state assistance.

The hospital/clinical board should be a different set of individuals skilled in hospital administration, capital markets, complex financing, and mergers and acquisitions. This group should develop a strategy to separate and privatize the hospital and clinical side. I would expect several billion dollars of proceeds from the sale that should be used to retire all MUSC debt, and the balance should be rebated to the taxpayer immediately upon sale.

Finally, state policy should be changed to encourage private practices by removing non-competes for physicians, removing all the existing barriers that prevent nurse practitioners from practicing primary care with telehealth support from physicians (including registered out-of-state physicians), and deregulating the environment to allow private, community hospitals to grow and thrive.

In summary, a state-run hospital and health care system that is consolidating not just hospitals but private practices under a state-funded enterprise backed by taxpayer dollars, with the taxpayer on the hook for debt, is the opposite of a system that fosters competition and gives the consumer choice. Any wonder that our costs are up and our outcomes are down?

Stay tuned, as The Reddy Room podcast will tackle health care in one of its early episodes this fall.

Below is an article I wrote that is a blueprint for family court reform in SC. It is not intended to be all inclusive but a start. Would love to see you all comment on it. I know there is a big family court conference being planned for October and it would be great to see all of you with energy around this issue coalesce around a common agenda that can be used to drive policy. I also intend to feature family court in the initial 4 or 5 inaugural Reddyroom podcasts that will launch in the next 6 weeks or so.

Rom Reddy: A Family Court Reform Strategy - FITSNews "This is not a Republican or Democrat issue but a citizen welfare issue that must be fixed and fixed quickly."

Based on the previous post that asked you the issues you want to talk about, the following are the main issues that repeatedly popped up in your comments;

Data centers, Taxes especially property taxes, Roads, Family court , Agencies like DSS and Uncontrolled growth in the state.

Over the next few weeks, I will address each of these issues one at a time including some past posts with a specific list of things we should be working on and pressuring elected officials. We will also make these issues a focus for our podcasts coming this fall.

The Reddy Room was created to be a conservative voice for the voiceless, a place to have thoughtful conversations rooted in our nation's founding principles and the values that made America exceptional.

But this isn't just our platform. It's yours.

What issues do you believe deserve more attention in South Carolina and beyond? Leave your thoughts in the comments. Your ideas will help shape future conversations, articles, podcasts, and discussions in The Reddy Room.

Let's have a respectful conversation that focuses on principles, solutions, and the future of our state.

Mike is being kind in his article below. I have proposed a more radical approach. Strategic targeting of businesses we really want not any one promising a job. No incentives for non strategic businesses like data centers, battery plants, solar, electric vehicles and all the other idiotic incentives we have been doling out.

In order to do this we will need to identify strategic businesses just like a company would identify strategic acquisitions. Cash incentives should be rare and have additional layers of approval including review by Governor who must be held accountable. Standard incentives should be limited to a tax break for a measurable metric.

The commerce department has grown by a factor of 4 or 5. It needs to be shrunk and run by a business person with mergers and acquisitions experience not some political appointee handing out our tax money with no accountability.

In other words it is time to hit the reset button on millions of taxpayer subsidies that are largely wasted.

Thank you Mike for a great analysis.
Rom Reddy

The Honor System South Carolina already owns the records that would verify these jobs. It stopped using them in the 1990s.

Please read this article reposted from Palmetto State Watch. These are issues I raised during the campaign.

Instead of responding to the underlying issues with transparent answers, Congressman Norman instead resorted to name calling and said I was a fraud who erased his past!

Basis for his claim: apparently, they did a deep dive trying to dig up dirt on me and found I had no social media history. The obvious answer? I never had a social media account of any kind prior to DOGESC (last man standing with a BlackBerry!!). The politically convenient thing? Don’t answer the Silfab issue and make up stuff about your opponent to distract. Sadly, it works more often than not.

A Federal Hand in Local Affairs: The Silfab Solar Story - Palmetto State Watch Foundation A federal congressman, a solar lobbying firm, and a school next door. PSW examines the decisions that brought Silfab Solar to Fort Mill.

During the recent gubernatorial run, I proposed slashing property taxes by using techniques that force local governments to cut spending, which is the only sustainable way to bring real tax relief. My proposals incorporated what Florida is doing (see linked article) with a few additional modifications for SC to keep taxes from shifting to other categories.

In addition to drastically increasing the homestead exemption that begins to eliminate property tax on most residential properties as Florida is doing, I also proposed to eliminate property tax on cars and trucks, cap increases on non-residential property taxes and in order to curb uncontrolled growth, I made future residents of SC who relocated to this state ineligible for the new homestead limits and ineligible for the 4 percent residential tax for 5 years from the date of their move.

I was encouraged to see this strategy start to have the intended effect in Florida, which is to wake up local governments and have them not just curb costs but SLASH their bloated spending which in SC had doubled in 10 years. Hopefully, whoever wins in November has the courage to still do this. IT WORKS!

Florida Cities Are Already Cutting Spending Ahead of Pivotal Property-Tax Vote A massive drop in revenue is potentially looming for the Sunshine State’s cities and counties.