Since 2022, 30,000 Ohio children have lost health insurance because of cost concerns while the state has provided billions to the wealthy in tax cuts and billions to private schools.
Hosts of Today in Ohio, the cleveland.com and Plain Dealer news podcast discussion, said Wednesday that connecting the two policy outcomes is key for people to understand how the state is being governed. They painted a devastating picture of misplaced priorities that betrays Gov. Mike DeWine’s promise to be a champion for children.
“30,000 kids. 30,000 kids in our state have lost health coverage since 2022, up through 2024,” said Courtney Astolfi, citing findings from Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. “This number pushes the state’s child uninsured rate up to 5.6%. And compare that to just 4.5% a couple years earlier.”
The timing of the coverage losses coincided with the end of pandemic-era protections that had kept people enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP. When federal protections expired in early 2023, Ohio undertook a massive eligibility review that resulted in approximately 600,000 people being disenrolled—many of them children.
What makes this situation particularly galling to the podcast hosts is how it contrasts with other fiscal priorities pursued by the DeWine administration and Republican-controlled legislature.
“Mike DeWine and the Republicans in the Ohio Legislature, on multiple rounds of budgeting, now have given billions of dollars to rich people. They’ve cut their taxes over and over again to give wealthy people more money,” Chris Quinn said. That’s the Mike DeWine legacy. That’s the Matt Huffman legacy. Let the kids go without health care so your wealthy friends get more money. This is such a stain on Ohio.”
The conversation placed these policy choices in the context of DeWine’s early months as governor. “Mike DeWine came into office saying, ‘I’m going to be the children’s governor. I’m going to make life better for children.’ And instead they’re given a billion dollars a year to charter and private schools with almost no accountability. They’re giving billions to rich people, and those kids go without health benefits… That’s the Mike DeWine legacy.”
The hosts wondered what the coverage losses mean for Ohio families already struggling financially. Without insurance, parents face impossible choices about seeking medical care for their children, potentially postponing necessary treatments due to cost.
Adding to their alarm is the specter of further cuts on the horizon. Astolfi noted that the federal “one big beautiful bill act” passed by the Trump administration and Congress “slashes Medicaid by a trillion dollars over the next decade,” suggesting the situation could worsen for Ohio’s vulnerable children.
The podcast discussion paints a stark picture of a state government that hosts argue has abandoned its most vulnerable citizens—children—while catering to wealthy interests through repeated tax cuts. Listen to the discussion here.
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