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Columbus Dispatch...
Kasich takes aim,
fires
By Joe Vardeon
Governor rips nursing-home lobby, says tax cut possible in ‘12
Tuesday, May 10
MASON, Ohio - In a suburban Cincinnati facility where tooling for
engines used by the military is made, Gov. John Kasich unleashed a
volley of verbal missiles at Ohio’s nursing-home lobby yesterday.
Kasich, whose speech was scheduled as an event to stump for his
two-year, $55.6 billion budget proposal, also said that if the state
holds the line on spending this year, “we will have a tax cut next
year.”
The governor declined to disclose the type or amount of tax cut after
his speech. He has in the past floated the idea of eliminating Ohio’s
income tax.
But Kasich was largely focused on the nursing-home lobby, which got his
attention with an ad paid for by the Ohio Health Care Association that
began airing on Friday.
Kasich accused the lobby of using political donations to win cash for
votes and made a call to arms in the Senate to uphold $427 million in
cuts to nursing homes that were approved as part of the budget by the
House last week.
“The process of the nursing homes winning every battle and budget fight
in the name of special interests must stop,” Kasich said to local
elected officials and members of greater Cincinnati’s business
community who assembled at Rhinestahl Corp. in Mason.
The 30-second television ad opens with an elderly woman in a bed and a
picture of Kasich in the foreground. It ends with a condemnation of the
“Kasich cuts,” a hand pulling a plug out of the wall, a flat-line EKG
and a message to call your state senator “before it’s too late.”
Kasich’s budget would expand home care for Medicaid-eligible Ohioans
and cut the rate paid to nursing homes.
“This nursing-home industry, the ones that are now putting these ads on
television to scare our senior citizens, it’s not acceptable,” Kasich
said.
Peter Van Runkle, executive director of the Ohio Health Care
Association, could not be reached to comment.
Kasich, citing 7-year-old statistics from a Kaiser Family Foundation
analysis of spending on nursing-home care, said Ohio pays more per
capita on nursing homes than all but five other states.
Kasich said he didn’t see the association’s commercial while at home
over the weekend and that the ad wasn’t targeted at him.
“It’s directed at the legislature so the nursing-home lobby can derail
reform one more time,” Kasich said, later adding: “We’re not going to
cave in to these special interests, and if they start winning, you’re
going to hear what I have to say about it.”
Citing numbers his staff has collected from the National Institute on
Money in State Politics, Kasich said nursing homes and people
affiliated with them have contributed $4.51 million to Ohio candidates
and political-action committees since 2004. He said they donated $1.7
million to Ohio politicians and committees in 2010.
On Sunday, The Dispatch reported that political-action committees for
the Ohio Academy of Nursing Homes and the Ohio Health Care Association
poured more than $830,000 into statewide and legislative races in the
past decade.
Individual contributions from current association staff members and
directors total an additional $700,000 in the same period.
Nursing-home interests gave more than $80,000 to Kasich during his
successful 2010 campaign, according to data compiled by Ohio Citizen
Action, a nonprofit watchdog group.
State Sen. Shannon Jones, who introduced Kasich in Mason yesterday and
was the sponsor of Senate Bill 5, received $31,000 from the Ohio
Academy of Nursing Homes from 2007 through 2009, according to filings
with the secretary of state’s office. The same group gave $11,000 to
Gov. Ted Strickland’s failed re-election bid last year.
“The amount of money we spend per capita (on nursing homes) is through
the roof, and they have used their political influence to run public
policy,” Kasich said. “No group should use political influence to run
public policy in the state of Ohio.”
Dispatch Public Affairs Editor Darrel Rowland and reporter Catherine
Candisky contributed to this story.
Read it at the Columbus Dispatch
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