10 Times Gov. Kasich Lied to Promote Obamacare in 2013

Governor John Kasich was elected in 2010 as a small-government conservative, so in 2013 he came up with several false talking points to justify his fight for the Obamacare Medicaid expansion.

Following are 10 instances when Gov. Kasich misled Ohioans to bolster support for the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, a key piece of the unpopular 2010 health care law Kasich claims to oppose.

[Expanding Medicaid] avoids leaving Ohioans’ federal tax dollars on the table and keeps the federal government from simply giving them away to other states.

Obamacare includes the promise of Medicaid expansion funding for the states that accept the law’s broad new eligibility limits, but this promise is entirely open-ended.

There is no predetermined pot of Medicaid expansion money; every state complying with the Obamacare expansion increases the total amount of new federal spending.

Ohio’s rejection of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion would not result in one more dollar going to any of the states choosing to expand Medicaid.

[Rejecting Medicaid expansion] takes $13 billion of Ohioans’ federal tax dollars out of our state and gives it to other states, —where it will go to work helping to rev up some other state’s economy instead of Ohio’’s.

If we don’t do what we should do on Medicaid, they’ll be spending it in California. […] We have an unprecedented opportunity to bring $13 billion of Ohio’s tax dollars back to Ohio to solve our problem.

In March, Media Trackers asked the Kasich Administration to provide evidence supporting the governor’s repeated assertions that Obamacare would bring Ohio “$13 billion of Ohio’s tax dollars” which would otherwise go to other states.

The Kasich Administration never replied, but several pro-expansion groups conceded that Kasich’s description of how Obamacare works was inaccurate.

I don’t want our dollars to be spent somewhere else. Because, you know, I worked in Washington long enough to know they don’t ever save anything. And secondly, their inability, their inability to solve a problem that ultimately will be resolved in a responsible way should not prevent Ohio from reclaiming our dollars to deal with our problem.

This is not about Obamacare. […] Medicaid expansion is no different than the current Medicaid program, and to try to tie Medicaid to Obamacare, I don’t see the connection.

Medicaid expansion is different than Obamacare. […] what we wanna do is to be able to bring back $14 billion of our money, Ohio taxpayer money, to distribute to people who treat folks who are addicted, the alcohol and drug community organizations.

It’s our money! This is not, like, somebody else’s money. […] Bringing our dollars back and helping these people to get their lives back is so right.

Chief Justice Roberts gave every state an opportunity to try to get federal dollars to improve Medicaid. […] We get $14 billion of Ohio money back to Ohio to deal with some of the most serious problems.

But there’s a big distinction between Medicaid and our ability to bring our money back to fix our problems, as opposed to a government takeover of the health care system. […] This is about our money. Washington doesn’t have any money — I want our money back.

So now we have a little bit of money left over, because we were able to do some things to bring our money back from Washington to treat the poor.

This story was originally published at Media Trackers.

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