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Supporters, opponents of health care plan put pressure on state officials
By Marc Kovac
COLUMBUS
Supporters of President Barack Obama’s health care law and Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding it called on state officials Friday to begin implementing provisions in the Affordable Care Act.
They want Gov. John Kasich and his administration to increase Medicaid eligibility and implement an exchange to provide affordable insurance to all, both provisions that are included in the federal law commonly referred to as “Obamacare.”
But opponents of Thursday’s ruling reiterated their plans to challenge the law in Ohio, where voters last year overwhelmingly OK’d a constitutional amendment designed to block such mandates from affecting residents.
And Kasich and administration officials have said they are leaning against increasing Medicaid eligibility and toward a federal insurance-exchange rather than one they develop for Ohio.
The two sides are setting the tone for a policy debate that likely will dominate the coming election campaign season, with no legislative action expected anytime before November.
“It is simply time to enact the law and end the politics,” Brian Rothenberg, director of Progress Ohio, a liberal advocacy group, told about two dozen people rallying near the Statehouse on Friday in support of Obamacare. “It is time to recognize that there will not be 60 votes to overturn this law in the U.S. Senate. And it’s time to make this about patients, not politicians.”
“A lot of this is going to be litigated,” said Tom Zawistowski, president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition.
“The Supreme Court punted. They didn’t decide. They just said we can’t handle this, we’re going to make this ruling about ... government taxing powers and kick it back to the Legislature.”
The Affordable Care Act allows states to expand Medicaid eligibility, enabling additional residents to qualify for subsidized health care. Rothenberg said the state should take advantage of the provision, since the federal government will pick up much of the cost.
“When people get sick, the hospitals do not turn them away, the government does not leave them on the sidewalk,” he said. “It costs us money anyway, and it costs us double; it costs us triple the amount of money, because we didn’t take care of the problem when we could.”
But the Kasich administration is expecting hundreds of millions of dollars in additional Medicaid costs as a result of the federal law from Ohioans who already are eligible for assistance but who haven’t applied in the past. That’s without expanding eligibility.
“We’ve got to figure out what we’re doing there before we think about expanding the program,” said Rob Nichols, the governor’s spokesman.
The federal law also calls for the implementation of insurance exchanges to provide residents and businesses with a single source for information on plan options. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 34 states and the District of Columbia already have received funding to establish their own exchanges.
And democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation at the Statehouse to create an Ohio Health Benefit Exchange.
But Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor told reporters Thursday that the state is leaning against developing an Ohio exchange, relying instead on whatever system is implemented by the federal government.
Nichols estimated that it would cost about $43 million annually to run a state exchange, versus about $1.6 million to plug into the federal exchange.