Gov. Kasich’s Medicaid Arguments Mirror Strickland’s Pleas for Passenger Rail Spending

By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  February 7th, 2013

A tale of two governors hooked on federal funds - Governor John Kasich has defended his decision to expand Medicaid eligibility in Ohio with logic he rejected when killing a “high-speed rail” project barely two years ago. Governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat, emphasized the need to goose Ohio’s economy using our “fair share” of federal funds – an argument Kasich, a Republican, is now employing to justify Medicaid expansion.

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was designed to add millions of Americans to Medicaid by promising generous funding to compliant states – and by withholding all Medicaid funding from states that refused to raise the eligibility cap to 138 percent of the federal poverty line….As the National Review editors wrote in a February 6 story, “The critical difference between the Medicaid expansion and most other federal subsidies is that governors are in a position to resist the expansion of Medicaid if they so choose: The Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that the federal government may not coerce the states into cooperating with the Medicaid expansion, and if enough states opt out, the expansion cannot work. Governor Kasich is marching in the Obamacare parade by his own volition.”  To Read More…..