Governor Kasich Vetoes Quality Funding
On Monday, Governor John Kasich signed House Bill 487 (the Mid-Biennium Budget Review, or MBR), after vetoing 13 line items in the bill. The most noteworthy veto eliminated the OHCA-supported proposal to reappropriate $30 million in Medicaid funds originally allocated for skilled nursing facility payments but unspent. These dollars would have been used to create a so-called “bonus pool” for SNFs with higher levels of achievement on the quality measures established earlier by Senate Bill 264. The Governor’s veto message justified his action because the MBR provision would “increase payments to nursing facilities, while no new data has been presented to justify those changes, demonstrate a need or explain the rationale for this specific amount.” The quality language, which would have provided incrementally more funding to SNFs that met more of the 20 quality measures, was supported strongly by both houses of the General Assembly and survived scrutiny in a House-Senate conference committee. OHCA, which worked hard to secure passage of the quality funding, issued a statement expressing disappointment in the Governor’s decision. The General Assembly did not override the Governor’s veto. An override would have taken a supermajority vote of both houses.