Sen. Bernie Sanders joined a rally on Thursday outside the Statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina, to call for expanded health care coverage in the state under the federal Affordable Care Act. The new federal health care law was designed to provide Medicaid coverage for more than 10 million of the poorest uninsured Americans – including an estimated 200,000 people in South Carolina – with incomes this year of about $16,000 or less. Under the law, the federal government covers 100 percent of the cost of expansion through 2016. The federal share then will slowly decline to 90 percent in 2020 and beyond.

After the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the expansion could only be implemented voluntarily, South Carolina was among states where Republican legislators and governors resisted giving more people access to health care.

States that embraced the health insurance expansion have seen remarkable results. According to Gallup surveys, Arkansas cut its uninsured population almost in half—from 23 percent to 13 percent. Kentucky went from 20 percent to 12 percent.

A University of South Carolina study found that the Palmetto State would receive $11.2 billion in federal funding by 2020 from Medicaid expansion. In addition to offering greater access to health care, the expansion would create more than 44,000 new jobs, the study concluded.