Kasich: Health Care Bill ‘Woefully Inadequate And Disappointing’

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By Ted Goodman

Ohio Republican Governor John Kasich blasted the House GOP’s health care replacement bill, asserting that Republicans shouldn’t cut Medicaid expansion “overnight.”

“I don’t have a problem with trying to move the Medicaid expansion,” Kasich told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning, “but you can’t do that overnight.”

Kasich, who ran an unsuccessful bid for president in the 2016 Republican primaries, has been a vocal critic of the House GOP’s insistence on repealing Medicaid expansion. Kasich explained that 700,000 people in Ohio are helped by the program, and a third of them have mental health issues or drug addictions.

“In 2020 that program is frozen [Medicaid], and people cycle off that program and they go on the exchange, and they give you 3 or 4,000 to buy health insurance,” Kasich explained.

“How do we think that the mentally ill have the ability to pay the deductible on an insurance policy?” Kasich lamented. The Ohio governor is hopeful that the Senate will overhaul the House version of the bill. “I hope and pray they’re gonna write a much bigger bill,” Kasich said.

Republicans in the Senate have more “favorable reviews,” of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, according to Forbes, which may mean the demise of the AHCA.

Kasich would not answer Tapper’s question about whether President Donald Trump broke a campaign promise by cutting Medicaid. He did ask that governors be given more power over the pharmaceutical industry, a group that Trump criticized repeatedly during the 2016 campaign. Kasich also criticized the $8 billion fund for high risk pools, a number that Kasich characterized as ridiculous.

The governor repeatedly said that he is not opposed to reforming the Medicaid program, but has been a vocal critic of the House GOP’s replacement plan.