Report: Haley manipulated panel

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley took federal funds to study a system to help people get health insurance under the national health care law but immediately undermined the process, according to a report in a Charleston newspaper.

Within weeks of a March 10 order setting up the committee, Haley told the author of the final report: “The whole point of this commission should be to figure out how to opt out and how to avoid a federal takeover, NOT create a state exchange,” Haley wrote in a March 31 email The (Charleston) Post and Courier obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Haley’s executive order setting up the committee said it was intended to “build trust and consensus among stakeholders” and to decide “whether or not the state should establish a health insurance exchange.”

The newspaper requested emails on the nonpartisan South Carolina Health Planning Committee from the state Department of Health and Human Services, a Cabinet agency run by Tony Keck, a Haley appointee who helped lead the committee.

The committee spent $109,000 of a $1 million federal grant through November.