House Medicaid Committee receives primer; JMOC warns drug costs and retroactive payments drove recent spending spike

Chair Gross convened the Ohio House Medicaid Committee on Oct. 1, 2025, and said the panel’s work over the next five to seven weeks will be “vital to the success of the main financing in our state budget,” noting Medicaid’s outsized share of state spending and quoting Governor Voynovich’s description of it as the “Pac Man of the state budget.”

Ivy Chin, Medicaid division fiscal staff at the Ohio Legislative Service Commission, gave a history and primer on Medicaid in Ohio, emphasizing the program’s size and structure. “Currently about 3,000,000 people are in enrolled in Medicaid,” Chin said, and she noted Ohio’s estimated Medicaid budget for fiscal 2025 was close to $44,000,000,000. Chin explained that Medicaid is a joint federal–state program, that Ohio’s program is run by the Department of Medicaid and implemented across multiple state agencies, and that the program covers groups including children, pregnant women, adults, and elderly and disabled populations under different eligibility rules.

Jada Brady, executive director of the Joint…