Exclusive: How Ohio’s Republican governor sold the state on expanding Medicaid

[babylonsister]

Exclusive: How Ohio’s Republican governor sold the state on expanding Medicaid

Posted by Sarah Kliff on February 6, 2013 at 2:12 pm

snip//

The Republican administration worked shoulder to shoulder with Obamacare supporters and opponents, crafting a lobbying campaign aimed at making a key portion of the health overhaul more palatable to businesses and legislators.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich quietly led a campaign to lay the groundwork for the state to move forward on the Medicaid expansion.

“We knew for the extension to even be a possibility, there needed to be a better understanding of it,” Kasich communications director Scott Milburn says. “That case needed to be made by stakeholders on the front lines. Once they got going, it became a persuasive argument. Their ongoing partnership on this is highly valued.”

Kasich announced Monday the result of that partnership: He supports the Medicaid expansion, a decision that could expand Obamacare to cover as many as 684,000 Ohioans, according to an Urban Institute analysis (Kasich’s office puts the estimate at 275,000).

Kasich was the fifth Republican governor to sign on, and some see his decision, within weeks of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s, as a tipping point. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced Wednesday that he too supports the Medicaid expansion, becoming the sixth Republican governor to do so. Overall, 24 states have signed onto the program.

“Certainly they’re giving other governors cover,” says Bill Pierce, a senior vice president at APCO Worldwide, who worked at Health and Human Services during the George W. Bush administration. “You’ve now got a real conservative state, a battleground state and a blue state all signed up. If you’re a Republican governor thinking about this, you fit into one of those categories.”

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/06/exclusive-how-ohios-republican-governor-sold-the-state-on-expanding-medicaid/

[Kolesar]

1. Kasich caught a lot of flack on Facebook for this

"I'll never vote for you again" and such.