Ohio Gov. John Kasich, would-be president, has made a very big deal in his run on being the moderate, the one guy willing to buck the rest of the Republican party and take Obamacare's Medicaid expansion because it was the Christian thing to do. Well, Kasich's Christian charity comes with a big helping of punishment.
COLUMBUS —Republican Gov. John Kasich's administration said Wednesday it's moving forward with plans to require more than 1 million Ohioans on Medicaid to pay a new monthly cost for their health coverage or potentially lose it.House Republicans added the provision to the state budget last year. The new charge would require federal approval. If successful, officials plan to begin requiring Medicaid recipients to pay into a health-savings account to support the cost of their coverage beginning in 2018.
More than 2.9 million Ohio residents are served by Medicaid, a $23 billion federal-state health program for low-income and disabled people.
That has to be approved by the federal government, and whether this one gets approval is very iffy. No state has been given the green light by the feds to completely drop people out of the Medicaid system for inability to pay. They've approved other HSA programs in other states, Arkansas, Iowa, Indiana, and Montana, but if Medicaid enrollees there fail to contribute a set amount to their HSA, they cannot be permanently dropped from the program.
It's not likely that Ohio is going to get that provision approved, but that's not going to stop Kasich and his Republican legislature from trying. Because Christian goodwill only extends so far—about as far as it can be paid for.