The healthcare election: Ohio's GOP governor candidate changes tune on killing Medicaid expansion

[Algernon Moncrieff]

Kos

Mike DeWine (R-OH) has predicated a whole lot of his gubernatorial campaign on opposing the current Republican governor's embrace of Medicaid expansion. DeWine has said that "Medicaid expansion is financially unsustainable for both the federal government and for Ohio" and that if he wins, the expansion "will not exist as we know it." He's attacked his primary opponent Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor for supporting Gov. John Kasich's decision to expand it. But lately he's changed that tune.

On Wednesday afternoon, DeWine flatly said he would retain the entire Medicaid expansion while seeking reforms, imposing work requirements for recipients and instituting wellness programs to reduce costs.

DeWine said his announcement, made while accepting the endorsement of the political action committee of the Ohio State Medical Association, was not a reversal of his prior position.

How much did the state medical association's PAC have to do with that? Everything, as Democrat Richard Cordray emphasizes

.