COLUMBUS – Gov. John Kasich says the U.S. Senate needs to fix its version of a bill to overhaul the American Care Act with bipartisan cooperation.
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Kasich appeared Sunday morning on CNN’s “State of the Union,” where he repeated his criticism that the Senate’s version of the overhaul will “significantly” curtail Medicaid funding and could harm treatment for the mentally ill, the chronically ill and those who are drug addicted.
“Both parties ought to be worried about poor people because I don’t think either party particularly cares about helping poor people,” Kasich said.
The Republican second-term governor said the Senate’s phase out of Medicaid expansion is an improvement. He said the legislation shouldn’t be rushed and that talks need to be transparent with both political parties working together to write a bill that’s sustainable.
He called the current political climate the “craziest” he has seen and decried the country’s lack of political leadership.
“If you can’t take a fastball on the inside, get out of politics,” he said of lawmakers reluctant to make difficult or unpopular decisions. “If you can’t take a pitch thrown at you and you can’t get out of the batter’s box, quit.”
Former Dem. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who is very much against both Republican plans, was dealing out some chin music when he spoke to an enthusiastic group at a rally at Express Live pavilion in the Arena District Sunday morning.
“This legislation will cause devastating pain to millions of American families,” the Vermont senator said of the Senate plan.
Sanders was targeting the Buckeye State where Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is opposed to the plan and Republican Rob Portman has expressed concerns.
President Donald Trump says he doesn’t think congressional Republicans are “that far off” on passing a health overhaul to replace what he’s calling “the dead carcass of Obamacare.”
That comes in spite of opposition from five Republican senators so far to the Senate GOP plan that would scuttle much of former President Barack Obama’s health law.
Unless those holdouts can be swayed, their numbers are more than enough to torpedo the measure developed in private by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and deliver a bitter defeat for the president.