Good News about the Health Care Compact

Here's important news from the Director Of Development for the Health Care Compact -- and it should be encouraging for all Ohio patriots:

Yesterday, Congressman Doug Collins of Georgia filed the Health Care Compact in the U.S. House of Representatives. Once Congress passes the legislation, the nine (and counting!) states that have joined the Compact would be able to take back control of health care from the federal government. You can check out the Congressman's press release here. 

This is just the first step in passing the Health Care Compact at the federal level, but it's an important one. We're working hard to ensure the bill is soon filed in the U.S. Senate, which would catapult our efforts at moving the Compact through Congress.

In the meantime, would you consider forwarding this email, sharing our Facebook announcement and retweeting our Twitter update? Let your friends know the Health Care Compact is the best option we have to undo Obamacare and give health care control back to the states, where it belongs. 

In other good news, it looks like we'll soon be adding to the nine states that have joined the Compact. While Montana's governor vetoed that state's bill in April, the Compact was voted favorably out of committee in Ohio last week. I look forward to reporting back to you with more news in the coming weeks. 

Remember, nine states have already approved the Compact (Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas, Kansas and Utah), and every additional state that joins gives us a greater voice in the halls of Congress. 
  

Thank you for your continued support of the Health Care Compact - the ONLY proposal that takes all health care decision-making authority out of Washington, D.C. and returns it to the states. Please continue to make your voice heard!

In liberty,

Jamie Kohlmann
Managing Director of Development

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Ohio Health Care Compact NEWS

Art credit: kansascity.com

Ohio Health Care Compact NEWS (h/t Marianne):

The Health Care Compact (HB 34) passed out of the State Government Committee last week with a vote of 9 - 4, along party lines!  Please take a moment to thank all the committee members that voted Yea, and ask for their support when the bill hits the House floor.  

Click here for contact information for the Yea votes.

We are hoping to have the full House vote the week of May 18th.

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Ohio Health Care Compact update

According to Ohio Rep. Wes Retherford, there will be a committee vote on the Health Care Compact (HCC) in Columbus tomorrow (May 6), "if the votes are there."  Please take a few minutes to call the committee members and ask them to vote yes on the HCC.  Here is a link to the committee members.

http://www.ohiohouse.gov/committee/state-government

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So Far, Not So Great: Medicaid expansion already costing taxpayers

Ohio Gov. Kasich’s Obamacare Medicaid expansion 

has already cost taxpayers more than $3 billion

From Ohio Watchdog (h/t Kirsten Hill)

By Jason Hart | Ohio Watchdog

Americans’ tax burden is already $3 billion heavier because of Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare.

By putting more able-bodied, working-age childless adults on Medicaid than Kasich projected, Obamacare expansion is reducing incentives to work and threatening traditional Medicaid recipients’ access to care faster and at greater cost than anticipated.

After Kasich expanded Medicaid unilaterally, a state panel approved $2.56 billion in Obamacare spending for the expansion’s first 18 months. The money was meant to last until July, but it ran out in February.

Kasich’s Obamacare expansion cost $323 million in March — 84 percent greater than estimates revised just six months earlier.

Kasich’s Obamacare expansion cost more than $3 billion from January 2014 through March 2015

Using monthly figures released by the Ohio Department of Medicaid, the Republican governor’s Obamacare expansion cost slightly more than $3 billion from January 2014 through March 2015.

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Click here to contact your state Senator.

Ohio primary bills and Photo ID Lobby Day info

Photo credit: oxlre.org

These just in from Ohio Tea Party Patriots via Marianne:

Ohio's Turf in Play There is a bill that just passed the House that would push our primary date back another week.  That would mean six more states would do their primaries before us, making Ohio less relevant in the process.   Also, Ohio is a winner take all state.  That means the candidate that received the most delegate votes, receives all the delegate votes, rather than the ones that actually voted for the candidate. Assuming Governor Kasich intends to run for President, if he received one more delegate vote than all the other candidates, he would receive all the delegate votes from Ohio. Why would our legislature want Ohio to be LESS relevant in an election cycle.  Could it be because Kasich is concerned about the lack of support he'll garner from his own state, especially since our state budget has expanded under his leadership?   Could it be because Kasich went against the will of the people and his legislature when expanding Medicaid, which is now 33% higher than projected? Could it be because Kasich continues to lie about Common Core and insult the parents of the children forced to deal with it, while he sends his girls to private school? If they should be changing anything, it should be the "winner takes all" rule.

It's About the Party Not the People Unfortunately, this battle over turf happens at every level, Federal, State and Local.  The role of the Party is to protect the Party and its turf, that is the only way to be successful in the party's agenda, whatever it may be. So how do we protect the people?  It starts at the local level. Become the Party.  Ask yourself: Who is my precinct rep in my county party? If you don't know, find out by calling your Central Committee Chair or your County Board of Elections.  If you don't have one, run for the office.  All you need is five valid signatures on your petition (always get more). Your precinct rep is your voice at the local level.  Know who they are or become one. If you need help, let CTPP  know.

Photo ID Lobby Day Just a reminder for this Wednesday's Photo ID Requirement Lobby Day: WHEN: Wednesday, April 29th: 10:00 a.m. - Attend press conference 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. - Meet with legislators WHERE: Ohio Statehouse Atrium (East Entrance) If you are unable to attend, please contact your state Representative and Senator and let them know that you support voter photo identification.  Ask them to show support and co-sponsor the legislation. Click here to contact your representative   Click here to contact your Senator # # #

Gov. Kasich and Medicaid Expansion

In the wake of the passage by Representatives in Columbus of a two-year state budget that contains funding for Medicaid expansion, here’s part of a column from The Washington Examiner on Gov. Kasich and health care:

John Kasich should be punished for expanding Obamacare

By Philip Klein | April 23, 2015

Ohio Gov. John Kasich has made clear that he's seriously considering running for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. If he formally announces, it will be important for conservative voters to punish him for his expansion of President Obama's healthcare law in his state.

Kasich is currently polling in the low single-digits, has no clear path to the nomination, and the grassroots aren't exactly clamoring for him to run. Yet he is being egged on by a group of Republicans who want to see the party move in a direction that's more comfortable with a larger role for government.

Though on the campaign trail he'll insist that he's a warrior for limited government, in reality not only did Kasich decide to participate in Obamacare's fiscally destructive expansion of Medicaid, in doing so he also displayed a toxic mix of cronyism, dishonesty and executive overreach.

A 2012 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court made it easier for states to reject Obamacare's costly expansion of Medicaid — as many governors prudently chose to do.

But in February 2013, despite campaigning on opposition to Obamacare, Kasich crumbled under pressure from hospital lobbyists who supported the measure, and endorsed the expansion. When his legislature opposed him, Kasich bypassed lawmakers and imposed the expansion through a separate panel — an example of executive overreach worthy of Obama.

Kasich cloaked his cynical move in the language of Christianity, and, just like a liberal demagogue, he portrayed those with principled objections to spending more taxpayer money on a failing program as being heartless.

"Why is that some people don't get it?" Kasich asked rhetorically  at an October 2013 event at the Cleveland Clinic, which lobbied the administration heavily for the expansion so that it could access a stream of money from federal taxpayers. "Is it because they're hard-hearted or cold-hearted? It's probably because they don't understand the problem because they have never walked in somebody's shoes."

Kasich's defenses of his decision to expand Medicaid are built on a mountain of lies, which have been doggedly chronicled by Ohio native Jason Hart (currently with Watchdog.org) for the past two years.

One of Kasich's recurring defenses has been that he was simply making sure that money Ohio taxpayers sent to the federal government got returned to the state. That argument could theoretically pass muster if it were a situation in which money not spent by Ohio were automatically funneled to other states, as with the economic stimulus bill. But that isn't the situation with Medicaid expansion, the funding for which is only spent in states that agree to participate.

It's also worth noting that although the federal government picks up the full tab for the expansion in its first three years, starting in 2017, states will have to start pitching in and by 2020 will have to cover 10 percent of the costs. As it is, Medicaid is crippling state budgets and is everywhere among the largest state expenditures.

Kasich has also emphatically tried to claim that the expansion of Medicaid has nothing to do with Obamacare. This is ridiculous. The Medicaid expansion is one of the central parts of the law, which is why the administration is fighting so bitterly for states to adopt it. According to the latest estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, Obamacare spends $847 billion over the next decade on expanding Medicaid — representing roughly half of the expenditures in the law.

Read the rest here.

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Voter Photo ID Lobby Day

From our friends at the Ohio Christian Alliance: 

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