Gov. John Kasich’s Medicaid expansion promotional tour made a pit stop in Ohio when Kasich visited for his annual State of the State speech Wednesday.
Kasich, a Republican, unilaterally expanded Medicaid after vetoing a legislative ban on doing so. He says he would repeal the 2010 federal health law that created and funds the expansion, but his presidential campaign is built around its success.
Since announcing his support for Obamacare expansion in February 2013, Kasich has stuck with a short list of easily refuted pro-expansion talking points. Wednesday’s speech in Marietta was no exception.
“The formula is working: fiscal responsibility, commonsense regulations, and of course always looking to cut taxes,” Kasich said. “And with the prosperity that comes from job creation and economic growth, we have the resources to go further and reach out to those who might otherwise be ignored.”
“And we should also take into account the fact that because of the prosperity and the additional resources, we’ve been helping the mentally ill, giving hope to the drug-addicted, the disabled and the working poor, and we should all be proud of that,” he continued.
Kasich’s Obamacare expansion is in no way a product of Ohio’s economic growth: benefits are 100 percent funded by the feds until the end of this year, and expansion enrollment has grown four times faster than private-sector employment.
The governor didn’t mention his $14 billion 2014-20 cost projection during his State of the State speech, but Obamacare expansion is on track to double that estimate by 2020. Through February, Kasich’s Obamacare expansion cost federal taxpayers more than $7 billion.
Asserting that Medicaid expansion is “making a difference,” Kasich said “more than 330,000 more women in Ohio now have access to health care” because he accepted federal deficit spending to put working-age adults with no kids and no disabilities on welfare.
“This means they can get healthy, stay healthy and better participate in the workforce, and expansion has also delivered new resources to help our communities address mental health issues and addiction,” Kasich said. “It is working for our people.”
Last spring, Kasich tried to cut Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women and women seeking tests or treatment for breast or cervical cancer. The governor’s attempt to cut the pre-Obamacare programs to match Obamacare expansion’s eligibility limit was blocked by state legislators.
Kasich uses drug addicts and the mentally ill to justify his embrace of Obamacare, but Medicaid expansion is not in any way targeted at drug addiction or mental illness — and an Oregon study of Medicaid expansion found that expansion did not improve health outcomes.
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