Kudos to Talking Points Memo for catching this:
Following Tuesday night’s primary in the Buckeye State, Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) is withholding his endorsement of the GOP nominee for his seat, Attorney General Mike DeWine, over fears DeWine will dismantle the state’s Medicaid expansion that Kasich broke with his party to champion and implement.
Kasich’s spokesman, Chris Schrimpf, said this week that the governor “looks forward to meeting with Mike and discussing the concerns,” including the state’s Medicaid expansion “and other efforts to make sure that no Ohioan is left behind.”
Kasich himself conspicuously dodged endorsing DeWine in a press conference on Wednesday, saying flatly about the primary: “It was held and some people won.”
Asked directly about the results of Tuesday’s GOP contest, he emphasized that he feels “very, very strongly about the issue of Medicaid expansion.”
Declining to mention DeWine by name, Kasich noted: “I want to see uniters. I don’t want to see dividers. I want to see a uniter – somebody that can transcend politics to put the people of the state first. So, we’ll see. I’ll be watching.”
The Democratic Governor’s Association pounced on the remarks.
“That’s not exactly a vote of confidence from the governor of your own party,” they noted in an email to reporters. “When it comes to party unity, Mike DeWine and the Ohio Republicans have a tough road ahead.”
Medicaid Expansion was a big issue in the GOP primary and forced DeWine to go further to the right:
Since Ohio Gov. John Kasich became one of very few Republican governors to embrace the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, the state has expanded coverage to roughly 700,000 previously uninsured people. Even though Kasich garnered a massive political backlash because of the move, he has since urged other GOP states to follow him and beaten back attempts from his own state party to chip away at the program. In 2017, he vetoed a bill passed by the Republican supermajority in the state legislature that would have frozen Medicaid enrollment and forced low-income enrollees to pay insurance premiums.
Any day now, however, Kasich will submit a request to the Department of Health and Human Services for permission to force those enrolled in the state’s Medicaid expansion to prove they’re working at least 80 hours per month. If the waiver is approved by the Trump administration, Ohioans unable to find work would have get placed with an organization in their county and work without pay to earn the value of their health care benefits.
At a recent campaign stop in Youngstown, the GOP frontrunner to replace Kasich, Attorney General Mike DeWine, told TPM he plans to go even further if elected governor.
“Our waiver might be even bigger,” he said. “We would want the ability to really redesign Medicaid, in particular regard to the people covered under the Medicaid expansion.”
But when TPM asked what exactly his Medicaid vision would entail, asking if he would, for example, follow other states in making beneficiaries pay premiums and subject them to lifetime limits, DeWine demurred.
“We have not come up with all the details,” he said. “But we know that we want to put a lot more emphasis on prevention.”
DeWine’s spokesperson, Ryan Stubenrauch, revealed more in an e-mail to the National Journal, saying the candidate “[plans] to utilize the increased flexibility of the Trump administration to seek waivers to pursue block granting of funds, a work requirement for able-bodied adults, and a redesigned medical services approach to Medicaid that emphasizes prevention and value based purchasing as a way to reduce costs.”
DeWine has focused much of his campaign on addressing the state’s opioid addiction epidemic, which claims thousands of lives each year. Though many lawmakers and medical professionals say the Medicaid work requirement could push thousands of people struggling with addiction out of treatment, DeWine insisted to TPM that they would be safely exempted.
“We’re making sure that we take of the people who are the most vulnerable and that certainly includes people who are in recovery,” he said. “All we’re saying with the work requirement is: if you’re an able-bodied adult and you do not have medical problems, you should be on the pathway to get out of dependency, and the way you do that is with a job. But for someone who is a recovering addict, the most important job they have is recovering, so they need to stay in that program, and Medicaid as I envision it would certainly accommodate that.”
But if Ohio’s waiver is approved, each county would be tasked with screening Medicaid enrollees to determine if they qualify for an exemption to the work requirement, and since there is no set legal definition of “recovering addict,” patient advocates worry that people will fall through the cracks. Additionally, because of the stigma associated with addiction, many may avoid seeking an exemption, and lose their Medicaid coverage.
DeWine’s primary opponent, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, is running to his right, particularly on health care. On Tuesday, she released an ad vowing to “end John Kasich’s Medicaid expansion.”
And you bet health care is going to be an issue between DeWine and Richard Cordray (D. OH):
Health care will be front-and-center for the gubernatorial race. Voters routinely say it is the most important issue to them in the 2018 election.
Legislative Republicans have tried to kill the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion in the state, though Kasich - a firm proponent of the expansion - vetoed it.
The Medicaid expansion extended health care to more than 700,000 Ohioans and provided funds to help treat opioid addicts.
DeWine has refused to take a firm position on what he would do regarding Medicaid. He released a television ad during the primary criticizing Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor for supporting the Medicaid expansion. He equivocated during his interview with the cleveland.com editorial board, leaving the option open for doing away with the expansion.
Cordray has said he outright opposes ending the Medicaid expansion.
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