DeWine's last-minute lie barrage (Cleveland, Green: middle-class, 2015, health insurance)

[WRnative]

Mike DeWine has a reputation of running dirty political campaigns and it has perhaps been no more obvious than in the last days of the current gubernatorial campaign.

DeWine has accused Cordray of an $800 million tax raise, even though technically there was no tax raise, Cordray had no responsibility for the decision, and the decision was a bipartisan one. What happened was that due to a looming budget shortfall due to Republican tax cuts and spending increases (sound familiar?), the Strickland administration and the Republican state Senate agreed to suspend a scheduled tax cut. Cordray was not part of the Strickland administration.

https://www.politifact.com/ohio/stat...ising-taxes-a/

Similarly, as the above article makes clear, Cordray wasn't responsible for job losses in Ohio during the Great Recession, especially as the Great Recession was predominately the creation of the inept George W. Bush administration and Republican Congress. DeWine was a Republican Senator during the Bush administration and very responsible for turning the cash basis budget surpluses left by the Clinton administration into mounting deficits and for the lax regulatory environment that precipitated the Great Recession banking crisis.

DeWine claims he supports health insurance for those with pre-existing conditions, but the facts suggest otherwise.

DeWine has consistently opposed the Affordable Care Act, which provides robust insurance coverage for those with pre-existing conditions. DeWine as attorney general even sued to eliminate the Affordable Care Act. Even as DeWine downplays his history of opposition to the ACA, neither he nor the Republicans have ever produced a healthcare plan that provides the level of coverage for those with pre-existing conditions, whether diabetes or opioid addiction, at the relative cost as the ACA. Exactly, what was DeWine's pre-existing health care plan? Pre-existing coverage is worthless if premiums, deductibles, plan limits, etc., make it relatively worthless, and that may be the kind of per-existing coverage favored by DeWine; who knows?

https://www.politifact.com/ohio/stat...re-existing-c/

DeWine Among Republicans On Defense Over Pre-Existing Condition Protections | WOSU Radio

Also, until well after the Republican primary, DeWine opposed Medicaid expansion in Ohio, which provided health insurance to hundreds of thousands of Ohioans with pre-existing conditions, including opioid addictions. Faced with massive opposition from Governor Kasich, who championed Medicaid expansion in Ohio over the opposition of his fellow Republicans, and the Ohio medical community, DeWine changed his position.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...caid-expansion

For much of his current campaign, DeWine didn't care at all about the 650,000 Ohioans who received good health insurance due to Medicaid expansion under the ACA, which DeWine still wants repealed. DeWine's claimed sensitivity to the need for healthcare due to his large family is a patent prevarication and hypocrisy.

<<Ohio Medicaid Director Barbara Sears says the analysis shows Medicaid expansion has cut in half the number of uninsured Ohioans. Ninety-six percent of people in the program with opioid addiction got treatment, and 37 percent of smokers were able to quit. One-third reported improved health, including better access to medical care for high blood pressure and diabetes. ER visits went down 17 percent, and there was a 10 percent increase in the number of people seeing primary care doctors. And most recipients said Medicaid expansion made it easier to find work, earn more money and care for their families.

The state's budget office, part of the executive branch, estimates Medicaid expansion will cost nearly $5.2 billion in 2021, the first year Ohio will pay its full share of the costs as determined by the Affordable Care Act.

Ohio budget director Tim Keen [an appointee of Republican Gov. Kasich] says the state's projected share would amount to $354.1 million. However, with drug rebates, assessments on managed care plans, a 1 percent tax on premiums and other offsets, the state's share drops to $163.1 million. "Medicaid expansion is a significantly better deal for the states and for Ohio than the traditional program, and that's important as one considers our ability to fund this program," Keen says.
>>

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...caid-expansion

DeWine's positions on healthcare lack both empathy and good economic sense. Eliminating the ACA and Medicaid expansion would foist millions of uninsured Ohioans back on emergency rooms, reducing the quality of their healthcare, in some cases impoverishing families and forcing them on to the regular Medicaid rolls, impair the quality of emergency rooms' ability to deal with real emergencies, and put Ohio's hospitals at increased financial risk due to increased unpaid bills, raising the cost of hospital charges for everyone.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...success-charts

How can anyone concerned about the quality of healthcare insurance or even healthcare in general in Ohio support DeWine, who can't even take honest responsibility for his actions regarding the ACA, pre-existing condition insurance coverage, and Medicaid expansion?

https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/in...dicaid_ha.html

DeWine also is using a last-minute claim that Cordray supported an $800-billion in Medicare funding. This is a common, and fallacious, Republican attack ad claim. Note that DeWine is hiding is campaign of lies from journalists and refuses to discuss the false claims in the ads. It's unclear how Cordray was responsible for this technical provision of the ACA as he wasn't in Congress when the ACA was passed; of course, DeWine's campaign won't discuss this egregiously misleading attack ad. The ACA reduced Medicare funding for hospitals and insurers because the ACA's other provisions would provide a massive windfall to hospitals by reducing the nation's uninsured, unpaid bills, etc., that had been passed on to the Medicare program through elevated fees.

https://www.dispatch.com/news/201810...k-rich-cordray

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...-says-huckabe/

Even if elected with the benefit of his last-minute avalanche of lies and deception, Ohioans won't be able to trust DeWine as governor IMO.

Note that DeWine's earlier ads about rape test kits was more accurate, so DeWine could afford to expose it to a longer period of media and public scrutiny.

https://www.politifact.com/ohio/stat...h-cordray-abo/

[OhioJB]

Like most politicians running for office they've both had misleading ads. Refused to vote for either one, nor the Libertarian or Green party candidates. DeWine has the same mentality as Kasich, tyrannical.

Cordray is clueless. In the first Democrat debate prior to the primary he touted the fact he was a strong advocate for the Cash for Clunkers program, which saw the destruction of millions of perfectly fine vehicles the working poor would have had available to purchase. That program hurt a lot of people.

[Natural510]

Ugh, now four years under this clown.

[Minervah]

Ultimately, the success of these ads depends upon the gullibility if the viewer.

[sheena12]

I am sickened. I do not believe that he will support coverage for pre-existing conditions, I think that he lacks both compassion and commonsense.

Never in my wildest dreams did I believe that DeWine would win.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by sheena12

I am sickened. I do not believe that he will support coverage for pre-existing conditions, I think that he lacks both compassion and commonsense.

Never in my wildest dreams did I believe that DeWine would win.

I thought Republican victory was very possible in the last week given the combination of 1) a massive financial spend that must have been locked up months ago and which supported the entire Republican ticket; 2) the complete absence in much of the state, certainly in Greater Cleveland, of any fact-checking regarding the false accusations that pummeled Democratic candidates and misrepresented Republican positions; and 3) the complete failure of the Democrats to respond adequately to these false ads; there should have been a state-wide website to rebuke all Republican lies.

I heard that voter turnout among independents lagged far behind both Republicans and Democrats. The Republicans with their lies were able to taint successfully the Democrats and convince the independents that there was no difference between Democratic and Republican candidates on issues such as pre-existing conditions. This was the same successful strategy used in the Portman/Strickland campaign when Portman falsely was portrayed as an opponent of free trade agreements. It's sickening and the Greater Cleveland media should be scorned.

The hypocrisy of Greater Cleveland's broadcast stations and Cleveland.com pocketing tens of millions in political advertising revenues but never fact-checking the ads has poisoned the local political process. The same process likely is playing out nationally. The willingness to lie backed by big money is now the winning combination in American politics, as exemplified by Donald Trump's disrespect for the truth.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by WRnative

DeWine has accused Cordray of an $800 million tax raise, even though technically there was no tax raise, Cordray had no responsibility for the decision, and the decision was a bipartisan one.

The correct amount in the second paragraph was $800 billion.

[HueysBack]

Let's be honest, the Dem's can't continue with this crappy stock of moderate candidates running on these weak, substance-less platforms. Keep going with the "safe option" and keep losing.

Jobs and the economy is the biggest issue for most Ohioans. As it should be.

Dewine's platform
Cordray's platform

You tell me which economic plan looks more legit?

It's easy to write off these new era, middle-class Republicans as ignorant and hate-fueled. Too many are. But fundamentally, many are victims of sudden job-loss and severe economic hardship. The Democrats decided long-ago to speak the language of the top 1% and bottom 10%. Republicans - at this point - just have to show up with a red tie to win.

The fact that Beto lost to Cruz was a surprise, not Cordray.

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by HueysBack

Let's be honest, the Dem's can't continue with this crappy stock of moderate candidates running on these weak, substance-less platforms. Keep going with the "safe option" and keep losing.

Jobs and the economy is the biggest issue for most Ohioans. As it should be.

Dewine's platform
Cordray's platform

You tell me which economic plan looks more legit?

It's easy to write off these new era, middle-class Republicans as ignorant and hate-fueled. Too many are. But fundamentally, many are victims of sudden job-loss and severe economic hardship. The Democrats decided long-ago to speak the language of the top 1% and bottom 10%. Republicans - at this point - just have to show up with a red tie to win.

The fact that Beto lost to Cruz was a surprise, not Cordray.

I don't agree with the thrust of this post, but don't have to time to explain why, and it doesn't immediately matter. And I know many persons who voted for DeWine and they aren't ignorant or hate-filled, but they also did not have a good grasp of the issues and especially the falsity of so many Republican attack ads.

However, Beto's loss to Cruz was no surprise, because some of his policies such as disbanding ICE were unacceptably extreme.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...lection-222188

[HueysBack]

Originally Posted by WRnative

I don't agree with the thrust of this post, but don't have to time to explain why, and it doesn't immediately matter. And I know many persons who voted for DeWine and they aren't ignorant or hate-filled, but they also did not have a good grasp of the issues and especially the falsity of so many Republican attack ads.

However, Beto's loss to Cruz was no surprise, because some of his policies such as disbanding ICE were unacceptably extreme.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...lection-222188

Well Ohio isn't going Blue again until a sharp populist like Beto comes to town. This whole "people were uniformed... it was the ads... the lies... yada... yada..." line that old Dem's - like Clinton - keep doubling-down with is suicide. Pure tone-deafness and hubris. It's like you guys like losing and then complaining about it for 4 years.

Obama was an anomaly who spoke the populist's language but governed like a moderate.

Do you think Bernie would have lost to Trump?