(Columbus, OH) A Medicaid expansion veto override may again be looming.
The Ohio House is weighing an override of Governor John Kasich's veto which protects Medicaid expansion after scrapping the idea during a special session last July.
There's a memo circulating among Republican House leaders gauging where the GOP caucus stands now that efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act appear stalled indefinitely in Congress. The governor vetoed a budget provision that called for freezing new expansion enrollment starting in mid-2018, and preventing those who drop off the program from re-enrolling.
That has pitted Republican leaders in Columbus against each other-- and 60 votes will be needed to block the veto. The delay was first called by the House Speaker to see how the national health care debate would play out.
Even Ohio's lieutenant governor is bucking her boss on Medicaid expansion, although he's backing her for his job. Lieutenant governor Mary Taylor says she's against Medicaid expansion, as she talked health care proposals on the campaign trail in Cleveland Monday.
Taylor now says she'd freeze Medicaid enrollment in the expansion of healthcare coverage to more than 700,000 low-income Ohioans. But a spokesman for Governor John Kasich calls such Medicaid expansion "a no-brainer."