COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Republican legislators in Ohio are bracing for a veto fight with GOP Gov. John Kasich as the national health care debate hits the 2016 presidential contender on his home turf.
Conservatives have called on the outspoken Kasich to set a national example by leaving in place a state budget provision calling for freezing new enrollment under Medicaid expansion starting July 1, 2018. Kasich must decide by midnight Friday.
Allowing the freeze would mark a stunning reversal for Kasich. He’s been one of the Republican Party’s most vocal defenders of the expansion, made possible under the federal health care law reviled, and now targeted, by his party.
Striking the provision, however, threatens to destabilize Ohio’s budget and to harm Ohio’s Republican legislators with their constituents in the politically divided battleground state.
Some 700,000 low-income adults are now covered under Ohio’s expansion, at a cost of almost $5 billion – most of which is picked up by the federal government. The Kasich administration has estimated that 500,000 Ohioans could lose coverage under a freeze within the first 18 months.