Ohio Conservatives Thwart New Kasich Medicaid Maneuver

Media Trackers ^ | June 06, 2014 | Jason Hart

[george76]

Conservatives in the Ohio House this week blocked a move widely viewed as an attempt by Governor John Kasich to set aside money he could later spend on Medicaid expansion without legislative approval.

The version of House Bill 483 (HB 483) passed by the Ohio Senate included a last-minute change to move as much as $300 million in surplus state revenue to the state Medicaid Reserve Fund.

Legislators feared this was an effort by the Kasich Administration to circumvent the General Assembly for spending on the Obamacare Medicaid expansion when an existing appropriation expires in mid-2015.

...

Kasich, a Republican, unilaterally enacted the Obamacare Medicaid expansion last fall, making hundreds of thousands of able-bodied childless Ohio adults eligible for the entitlement program meant to serve children, low-income parents, and the physically handicapped.

Because legislators refused to support Kasich’s Obamacare expansion, the governor turned to the obscure Ohio Controlling Board to appropriate the program’s federal funding.

The seven-member board approved the Kasich Administration’s request after John McCarthy, Kasich’s Medicaid director, warned that refusing to appropriate $2.5 billion in Obamacare funding would bankrupt the Ohio Medicaid program.

[packrat35]

Anothe former so-called “conservative” that stabbed taxpayers in the back.

[Kenny]

Good for them!

[House Atreides]

Kasich has “evolved” into a statist and he has inserted his statist operatives into boards responsible for Ohio’s Medicaid program. I applaud the conservative Republicans who are still fighting against Kasich’s moves to unilaterally and administratively expand Ohio’s Medicaid program to incorporate Obamacare provisions.

Kasich is now “dead to me” and I hope he is to other constitutional conservatives who keep their eyes open and observe how folks such as Kasich walk the walk and how that frequently differs from the talk they talk.

[ilgipper]

Kasich has been a real disappointment. I was a big fan in the 90s and thought he’d be a good governor. He seems intent on skulking away from anything that couple cause him to be a target of the media. Not at all what I expected.

[nomad]

That’s why he won`t get my vote again.

[Sal]

Just a calculated guess on my part, but I suspect he is being blackmailed. He was pals with Gary Condit and it came out that Condit and his pals were having orgies at his DC apartment. No one but Condid was identified, but the apartment had lots of different semen deposits.

..."Nancy Pelosi of California, the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the House, who used to be one of Condit's staunchest allies but withdrew her endorsement of him in December and has since gone mum. As has former Representative John Kasich, an Ohio Republican who was a good buddy of Condit's -- they went to a Pearl Jam concert together -- but scurries off the phone as soon as I state my business." (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/17/magazine/gary-condit-is-still-running.html )

This was all after Condit's intern lover Chandra Levy was murdered.

Kasich was not implicated publically but he dropped out of politics for several years...