In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, Ohio is much better positioned than otherwise thanks to former Gov. John Kasich, a suburban Columbus Republican.
Kasich rubs lots of people the wrong way. But Kasich’s bullheadedness is partly why he had the strength to say “no” when that was the right answer at the Statehouse, and “yes” when that was the right answer.
Example: But for Kasich’s stewardship, Ohio wouldn’t have a $2.7 billion rainy day fund to help balance Ohio’s budget amid the damage the pandemic’s doing to Ohio’s economy. Yet in 2018, his critics, from both parties, demanded that he spend that money. Kasich said no.
And Kasich decided to expand Medicaid coverage in Ohio, despite the whines and yelps of some other Republicans, who claimed expansion would be an endorsement of Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. As of February, the Medicaid expansion covered an estimated 604,564 Ohioans. Expanding Medicaid in 2013 is why Ohio has hospital beds it might not otherwise have in 2020 – beds desperately needed in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
When Kasich took office in 2011, succeeding Democrat Ted Strickland, Ohio’s Rainy Day Fund totaled 89 cents. (That is not a typographical error.) The rainy day fund, formally the Budget Stabilization Fund, is a backstop for Ohio’s budget when the economy goes south.
In fairness to Strickland, as PolitiFact, the Poynter Institute’s fact-checking program reported, “Strickland’s defenders say the recession that hit the United States and Ohio required Strickland and state officials to drain the $1 billion fund." And they note the fund started to be replenished “at the tail end” of his final budget, even though Strickland had left office. In plain English, George W. Bush’s recession dealt Ted Strickland and most other Ohioans a bad hand.
In mid-2018, Kasich deposited more than $657 million in the rainy day fund, bringing its total to nearly $2.7 billion. Bystanders from both parties had demanded that Kasich spend that money, in part as aid to local governments, rather than stash it in Ohio’s cashbox.
Kasich told the critics to take a walk. And because of that, Gov. Mike DeWine and the legislature have a financial backstop they otherwise wouldn’t have to help address the pandemic.
So far, 36 states (including every state bordering Ohio) and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid, thanks to the Affordable Care Act. In 2013, though, Ohio’s General Assembly, then as now GOP-led, refused to OK Medicaid expansion. Re-reading that year’s Statehouse news stories suggests that while some legislative Republicans may have privately favored expansion, they feared primary election challenges from the GOP’s Hate Obama First crowd. Rather than ask the legislature to OK Medicaid expansion, Kasich and his allies, in a crafty move, asked the state Controlling Board (six legislators and an executive branch representative) to. And in a 5-2 vote, the Controlling Board expanded Medicaid in October 2013.
The two then-members of the board who voted “no” on Medicaid expansion were Sen. William (Bill) Coley, a suburban Middletown Republican now running for an Ohio 12th District Court of Appeals judgeship – the eight-county court includes Butler, Warren and Madison counties – and then-Rep. Jeff McClain, an Upper Sandusky Republican now in DeWine’s Cabinet as tax commissioner. (McClain’s son, Rep. Riordan McClain, now holds the elder McClain’s former Ohio House seat.)
The journal Health Affairs reported early in 2018 that Medicaid expansion “was associated with ... substantially lower likelihoods of [hospital] closure, especially in rural markets and counties with large numbers of uninsured adults.” Closed hospitals mean fewer beds.
True, two small-town hospitals did close last year, Bellaire’s Belmont Community, owned by Wheeling Hospital, and Martins Ferry’s East Ohio Regional, owned by California-based Alecto Healthcare Services LLC. (The hospitals were less than ten miles apart, and across the Ohio from Wheeling.)
Mike DeWine and the General Assembly’s leaders, Republicans and Democrats alike, have justly earned praise for how they’re managing Ohio’s response to the pandemic. The contrast between taking-care-of-business in Columbus and both parties’ Washington theatrics couldn’t be sharper. And Ohio’s government, in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, has a couple weapons it likely wouldn’t have – but for decisions that John Kasich made as Ohio’s governor.
Thomas Suddes, a member of the editorial board, writes from Athens.
To reach Thomas Suddes: tsuddes@cleveland.com, 216-408-9474
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