‘Mr. Republican’ supported funding for health care
Astudy published April 12 in the journal Health Affairs reported that states such as Ohio that expanded Medicaid to cover the working poor, an option offered by the Affordable Care Act, “did not experience any significant increase in state-funded expenditures, and there is no evidence that (Medicaid) expansion crowded out funding for other state priorities.”
That study, by Harvard’s Benjamin D. Sommers and MIT’s Jonathan Gruber, suggests that Ohio’s Medicaid expansion has been a good deal for Ohio and Ohioans. Republican Gov. John Kasich and his aides accomplished Medicaid expansion despite yowls from some General Assembly mossbacks. (And just FYI, the mid-2017 to mid-2019 budget squeeze Kasich and the legislature’s GOP leaders recently projected results from tax collections that have been lower than expected, not Medicaid.)
Still, it appears the Trump administration, when Congress returns from one of its vacations, might take another run at repealing or weakening the Affordable Care Act, possibly freezing or ending Medicaid expansion. Ohio, 30 other states, and the District of Columbia opted for Medicaid expansion to help more of their residents obtain health care. (Among the expansion states is every state that borders Ohio.)
True, it’s possible President Donald Trump might not be able to craft an anti-ACA package that can get through Congress. Still, curbing or junking the Affordable Care Act isn’t really, or mostly, about health care. It’s mostly about tax cuts for the rich. And that’s an idea that surely has curb appeal among congressional Republicans, who can be honored guests in swank suburbs — for as long as they’re useful.
Whether congressional Republicans are True Believers or just cynical, they, like all officeholders of both parties, like to wrap what they do in supposed “principles” or “philosophy.” Voters know the drill: “Rugged individualism” really means, “Every man or woman for him- or herself.” The “magic of the market” really means, “I own the market, you pay my prices.”
In that connection, it’s interesting to learn what a genuine conservative, a nationally famed Ohioan, said about health care and government. His name was Robert A. Taft, a Cincinnati Republican who represented Ohio in the U.S. Senate from 1939 until his death in 1953. (Later in the ‘50s, a panel led by then-Sen. John Kennedy honored Taft as one of the Senate’s five greatest-ever members.)
Taft, once a member of Ohio’s House and Senate, was widely known as “Mr. Republican.” He was denied a GOP presidential nomination by Republicans of the “globaloney” (international intervention) persuasion who didn’t like Taft’s opposition to foreign wars.
Consider some things Bob Taft said about health care. (Quotes are from the great compilation of Taft’s papers by Clarence E. Wunderlin Jr.)
In a 1945 letter, for instance, Taft wrote, “We have long ago accepted the principle that people unable to provide themselves with adequate medical care shall receive it free from the government.”
Taft also opposed those who said in so many words that anybody who really needed medical care could rely on charity care. Here’s what Bob Taft said about that, in a 1946 speech to the Wayne County (Mich.) Medical Society: “Great as is the charity (care) offered, those unable to pay for medical care undoubtedly fail to get it in many cases where it would be of substantial benefit to them.” And, Taft said in the same speech, “Care by the state of the 20 percent having the lowest income is no interference with the freedom of the other 80 percent.”
Those words, unlike many words voters hear these days, are the words of a genuine conservative.