Ohio’s Medicaid expansion is down, but not out. House Republicans kept alive the possibility that Ohio may expand its Medicaid program to cover the working poor, approving an amendment to its budget that could open the door to changes later this year.
The change was one of several the GOP-controlled House considered as members poised late Thursday night to vote on their iteration of Gov. John Kasich’s “Jobs Budget 2.0” The chamber approved a budget proposal for the next two years by a vote of 61-35.
Among other changes, the House scrapped language that would have put new restrictions on sex education in schools, barring instructors from endorsing anything other than abstinence as acceptable behavior and giving parents the ability to sue an instructor who violated the provision.
The budget would eschew Kasich’s sweeping tax reforms in favor of a permanent 7 percent income tax cut. House Democrats attempted to replace the GOP plan with a 10 percent tax cut targeted at the middle class. It was one of more than a dozen amendments introduced by Democrats, nearly all of which the Republican-controlled House shot down.
Among the defeated amendments were measures to require financial disclosure from JobsOhio, reintroduce Kasich’s Medicaid expansion into the budget, abandon a provision that could stifle college voters and remove language that would strip public money from Planned Parenthood.
“We are extremely disappointed to see the measures that hurt the most vulnerable women, limiting their access to health care, remain,” Stephanie Kight, president of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, said in a statement. “These provisions are bad health policy and bad fiscal policy. They don’t belong in the budget.”
The GOP amendment on Medicaid expansion, introduced by Republican Rep. Barbara Sears of suburban Toledo, requires that legislation to reform the Medicaid program in Ohio be introduced in the House, but does not specify what shape that reform will take. It directs the governor’s Office of Health Transformation and his Medicaid director to provide assistance in developing the legislation. And if the legislation is not enacted before the year ends, efforts to change Medicaid must cease.
Minority Democrats, who unsuccessfully tried to get a full Medicaid expansion included in the budget, reluctantly went along with the GOP amendment.
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