Former state official: HB96 ‘kill switch’ and runaway spending threaten Ohio Medicaid expansion; PBM, NextGen projects cited as budget pressures

Greg Moody, former director of the governor’s Office of Health Transformation and now a professional‑development director at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, told the Joint Medicaid Oversight Committee that Ohio’s Medicaid expansion brings billions of federal dollars into the state and warned that language in House Bill 96 could force an abrupt end to the expansion if federal funding levels change.

Moody said expansion delivers substantial federal funds: the department’s recent figures, he said, show the state spent about $838 million in state dollars last year to draw roughly $7.5 billion in federal funds, for about $8.4 billion in total Medicaid spending tied to expansion and related services. He said ending expansion would save a portion of state outlays but would also require the state to replace tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of services currently paid at the 90 percent federal match, including services for mental health and addiction.

“Keeping the expansion means keeping all current services, including mental health and addiction services,” Moody said in his presentation. He told the committee that replacing mental‑health and addiction services now funded through expansion would cost at least $500…