Ohio tea party groups oppose Medicaid expansion

JOHN SEEWER

Asso­ci­ated Press

TOLEDO — Sev­eral tea party groups in Ohio say they’ll work to stop the state from expand­ing Med­ic­aid cov­er­age for low-income res­i­dents, argu­ing it will be too costly and won’t reduce high health care costs down the road.

Lead­ers of two dozen tea party orga­ni­za­tions sent a let­ter to Repub­li­can Gov. John Kasich telling him that they’re against his Med­ic­aid proposal.

“There is no such thing as ‘free money,’ and bor­row­ing tax­payer dol­lars to pay for an expanded enti­tle­ment pro­gram does not solve the long term prob­lem of afford­able health care,” said Mar­i­anne Gasiecki, a co-leader of the Tea Party Patri­ots in Ohio.

Their stance isn’t a sur­prise since most con­ser­v­a­tive groups oppose Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care law, which makes Med­ic­aid expan­sion a key part of the plan.

State law­mak­ers, who must approve the expan­sion, are hear­ing details about the plan included in Kasich’s two-year bud­get proposal.

The direc­tor of Ohio’s Depart­ment of Men­tal Health and Addic­tion Ser­vices told the House finance com­mit­tee on Tues­day that expand­ing Med­ic­aid would reduce wait times for coun­sel­ing and other ser­vices and save the state money.

Tracy Plouck, direc­tor of the depart­ment, said many Ohio res­i­dents who receive men­tal health and addic­tion treat­ment paid for by the state and local gov­ern­ments would be eli­gi­ble for those ser­vices through Med­ic­aid if the expan­sion is approved.

“Once these newly eli­gi­ble Ohioans are enrolled, Med­ic­aid cov­er­age for clin­i­cal ser­vices will free up statewide an esti­mated $70 mil­lion annu­ally in county levy and state sub­sidy dol­lars,” she said.

The gov­er­nor has said that expan­sion will allow the state to get back Ohio res­i­dents’ tax dol­lars from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, which would pay the entire cost of the expan­sion for the first three years.

The state would see $13 bil­lion from the fed­eral gov­ern­ment over the next seven years to cover those newly eli­gi­ble for Med­ic­aid, accord­ing to the Kasich admin­is­tra­tion. Roughly 366,000 Ohio res­i­dents would be eli­gi­ble for cov­er­age under the expan­sion begin­ning in 2014.

But many Repub­li­cans are leery of the new fed­eral health care law and its cost.

Posted by AP News on Feb 26 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.