While Donald Trump’s White House and the Republican Party continue to disparage the Affordable Care Act in the hope of bolstering proposed budget cuts and the American Health Care Act, states are taking matter into their own hands. Like Nevada, whose legislature passed a bill in June that would grant all of its residents access to Medicaid. Others, like former Republican presidential candidate John Kasich’s Ohio, have struggled from partisan positions caught between Obamacare, Trumpcare and every other possible standpoint.
Case in point, Thursday’s non-vote in the Ohio House to override Gov. Kasich’s recent veto of a state budget provision ordering him to freeze Medicaid enrollment expansion with federal approval. According to the Associated Press, any attempt to overturn the governor’s veto requires a minimum of 60 votes by the Republican-controlled House, but the legislature couldn’t drum up the necessary votes. The Columbus Dispatch explains that Speaker Cliff Rosenberger “said he would not bring it up if he did not have the 60 votes needed for an override,” and since the House didn’t have them by Thursday, the speaker reneged on the vote.
The House was able to call votes on, and override, 11 other vetoes Kasich made before signing the proposed budget last week. As for Medicaid’s expansion in the state, the Republican governor’s veto to prevent its suspension on July 1, 2018 remains intact. This may seem odd, as both Kasich and his colleagues controlling the House hail from the same political party. Yet the governor has often railed against the GOP — at the state and federal levels — whenever policies or politics weren’t to his personal liking.
(Via Associated Press and Columbus Dispatch)