Kasich fights Medicaid veto override talk
Gov. John Kasich’s administration says that House Republicans leaders are making numerous false statements in their efforts to persuade members to support a veto override that would freeze Medicaid expansion enrollment.
Following comments from Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, R-Clarksville, who last week said the House would revisit whether to take up the expansion override, Rep. Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, the assistant majority whip, wrote a memo to members asking where they stood on a possible vote.
He asked for a reply from
members by Sunday evening. A call was made to McColley on Monday.
“The speaker would just like to see where everyone stands after this week’s caucus conversation and after Congress has shown no signs of progress on the issue,” McColley wrote.
The memo listed multiple assertions to favor freezing Medicaid expansion enrollment starting July 1, 2018 — facts, McColley said, that “appear abundantly clear.” But Kasich’s Office of Health Transformation disagreed, arguing that it “includes numerous factual inaccuracies.”
The House memo said no new enrollees would be accepted unless they are diagnosed with a mental illness or drug addiction.
Kasich’s office said that the federal government wouldn’t allow Ohio to serve certain groups but not others, so if the Medicaid expansion were overridden, all eligible people would be denied health coverage.
The memo said Congress is not likely to act on a healthcare fix “anytime soon.” But the U.S. Senate could try again next week to vote on a bill that would repeal Medicaid expansion, which provides health coverage for more than 700,000 Ohioans.
Elimination of the enhanced federal match for expansion — currently 95 percent, dropping to 90 percent by 2020 — would cost the state an extra $1.6 billion per year, the memo said. “Clearly these dollars will be impossible to come by, unless we want to cut funding to primary and secondary education, higher ed or local governments.”
Kasich’s office said that if Congress does not act, the federal match would not change and the $1.6 billion cost would never materialize. If the federal match is changed and Ohio cannot afford it, Kasich said, the expansion should end at that point.
The House GOP memo said Medicaid expansion spending is “out of control,” 94 percent higher than initially projected, an all-funds budget total of $8.3 billion over initial estimates by the end of the year.
Kasich’s office argued that total Ohio Medicaid spending consistently has been significantly under budget.
The memo said that 60,000 Ohioans, many with severe intellectual and developmental disabilities, are currently waiting to be enrolled in Medicaid “while the expansion spending explodes on many individuals who are able-bodied single adults without children.”
Kasich’s office noted that numerous organizations, including The Dispatch and Politifact, have declared that to be a false correlation. As Politifact wrote: “We found no link between the waiting list and Medicaid expansion. In fact, studies found that Medicaid expansion increased services for the disabled.”
The memo said even if the freeze is enacted and Congress fails to take action, those unable to enroll “will be eligible for insurance subsidies that will pay a significant portion of the cost of their health-care premiums.”
Kasich’s office said that is not true for more than 500,000 Ohioans enrolled in the expansion who earn less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level. They would not qualify for subsidies, the office argued, and “many of them with mental illness and drug addiction will have no source of affordable coverage.”
The House voted in early July to override 11 of Kasich’s 47 budget vetoes but did not consider the Medicaid expansion veto. Rosenberger and others said at the time that the issue could be revisited at a later date. At the time, he said that if he chose to, the House could get the 60 votes needed to override the expansion freeze.
Brad Miller, spokesman for Rosenberger, chose not to address the Kasich administration’s rebuttal to the memo. “The potential for an override vote is still being discussed among caucus members, but I do not expect it to be brought up for a vote this week.”