Critics of Medicaid expansion were vindicated again last week when the Obama administration denied Ohio’s request to incorporate HSA (health savings account) features into the state Medicaid program. Opponents of Governor John Kasich’s 2013 expansion of Medicaid to childless, able-bodied, working-age Ohioans argue that hospital lobbyists, federal bureaucrats, and cowed state lawmakers will make future reform — much less repeal — nearly impossible. Now, officials in the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have dealt welfare-reform advocates another setback, killing a proposal to require some of the adults in Ohio’s Medicaid program to pay meager monthly HSA contributions.
“CMS is concerned that these premiums would undermine access to coverage and the affordability of care,” Andrew Slavitt, the acting administrator of CMS, explained in a September 9 letter denying the state’s request for a Medicaid waiver to implement the Healthy Ohio Program (HOP), which the Ohio General Assembly approved in 2015. …
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