COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio House Democrats were more than happy to pick up the Medicaid expansion football dropped by Republicans in changes they made to Gov. John Kasich’s budget proposal.
John Carney, who represents northern Franklin County, House Minority Leader Armond Budish (D-Beachwoood) and Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood) and held a press conference yesterday to introduce a stand-alone Medicaid expansion bill, a day after majority Republicans stripped the provision from Kasich’s $63.3 billion two-year spending blueprint.
“The emergency room is the most expensive healthcare provider and failing to expand Medicaid will keep the emergency room as the location of only resort for hundreds of thousands of Ohioans. Rejecting Medicaid expansion is not fiscally conservative, it is fiscally irresponsible,” Carney said.
Republicans, claiming the health-care reform picture in Washington lacked “clarity,” decided Tuesday not to accept $13 billion in federal aid to increase Medicaid coverage to Ohioans earning 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
Carney, Antonio and Budish challenged Republicans to clear the way for their measure.
“We ask Republican leadership to put aside tea party threats and allow the bill to be voted on, on the House floor, where it will have strong bi-partisan support,” Budish said.
Tea party-affiliated groups sent e-mails to lawmakers threatening primary challenges to any who voted for Kasich’s budget as long as it contained the Medicaid provision.
Estimates are that the proposal would have expanded Medicaid to 275,000 Ohioans.
The bill, co-sponsored by Carney and Antonio — mirrors the expansion plan, which takes advantage of a provision in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, known as “Obamacare,” under which the federal government would fund 100 percent of Medicaid coverage to individuals with incomes up to 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level from 2014-2016 and 90 percent after that.
The first Senate hearing on the budget, meanwhile, will be in front of the Finance Committee on April 16.