Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter and writes from Ohio University.
GOP grandstanders are knifing lame-duck Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.
In the psychodrama that’s Ohio’s Republican Party, a key appointee of President Donald Trump, Dr. Mehmet Oz, is defending him.
Issue: Purportedly widespread Medicaid fraud, supposedly under-policed by DeWine.
According to Oz, The Columbus Dispatch reported, “Ohio needs more guardrails to prevent Medicaid fraud … but he trusts … DeWine to get the job done.”
True, while the Ohio GOP’s foundering November ticket needs an issue, any issue, to hold statewide offices this November, Medicaid, may not be the smartest bet.
Republicans have controlled:
Kicking the poor?
So that’s why Medicaid’s problems – and there clearly are some – are all due to Mike DeWine and his appointees.
Or maybe, it’s just payback time for some General Assembly Republicans whose looney ideas lame-duck Gov. DeWine blocked (though not enough of them).
Or easiest prediction of all, maybe it’s just Chapter 1 of Ohio Republicans’ time-tested playbook, “Kick the Poor.”
Because, hey, Republican’s nominee for governor, Cincinnati zillionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, isn’t exactly setting the state on fire – at least not in a good way – so the GOP needs something to derail Democratic candidate Dr. Amy Acton, of Bexley.
Result: Claiming that a “new” (actually, recycled) GOP crew at the Statehouse could kick Medicaid moochers of the rolls, so Ohio could swim in milk and honey.
Why Dr. Oz matters
Dr. Oz is a byproduct of Oprah Winfrey’s celebrity cavalcade, but Oz – a native of Delaware (the state), of Turkish-American parentage – has a genuinely distinguished record. He earned his undergrad degree at Harvard and his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania.
Trump appointed Oz – born in Cleveland in 1960 when his father held a medical residency at what was then Western Reserve University – to be director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. And Medicaid just happens to be the single biggest expense in Ohio’s two-year state budgets.
The U.S. Senate confirmed Oz in a 53-45 party line vote with both Ohio’s Republican senators – Jon Husted, of Upper Arlington, and Bernie Moreno, of Westlake – voting for Oz.
Husted, appointed to the Senate by DeWine, is seeking election to the Senate seat. His challenger is former Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Bexley Democrat, unseated in 2024 by Moreno.
Big non-surprise – Husted was accompanied by Oz at a recent in-Ohio appearance aimed at scotching arguments that GOP legislation will force some rural Ohio hospitals to close.
Ah, so good to hear – but a raft of health care analysts predicts that’s exactly what will happen.
Reason: Trump’s “one, big, beautiful” bill, which he signed last summer, even though the measure includes a Husted-promoted amendment aimed at backstopping Ohio’s rural hospitals.
Rural Ohio has an emergency
But according to a policy explainer by the Health Policy Institute of Ohio, though the so-called Rural Health Transformation allotment for rural Ohio hospitals “will [total] more than $202 million in federal dollars this year … the amount is one of the lowest in the nation based on rural population size.
“In addition, the funding will not replace all of the losses to rural health funding expected due to other provisions in of the bill ($5.6 billion for Ohio over the next 10 years, according to KFF estimates).” (KFF is the new name of the Kaiser Family Foundation.)
Translation for rural Ohioans facing a medical emergency: Keep the car gassed up (at $5 per gallon) for that big, beautiful, 60-mile drive to the nearest ER.
Leaving aside six years when Democrats led Ohio’s House under Vern Riffe or Armond Budish, Republicans have virtually owned the Statehouse for 30-odd years, including Ohio’s roll-over-and-play-dead Supreme Court, and now Mike DeWine’s stewardship of Medicaid is a problem?
No, the problem for Republicans isn’t Medicaid. It’s that they’re hearing the footsteps of a Democratic woman.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter and writes from Ohio University.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: GOP loves kicking poor but DeWine headhunt about Acton not Medicaid | Opinion
Reporting by Thomas Suddes, Columnist / The Columbus Dispatch
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