The Buckeye Institute has been leading the way in Ohio by offering detailed critiques of expanding Medicaid in the state, and offering meaningful alternatives.

Long-time Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner frequently said, “There are no permanent victories in Washington.” The same may be said for Columbus. Although advocates of freedom and fiscal responsibility saw a major victory when the proposed expansion was stripped from the budget by the Ohio House of Representatives, make no mistake: it is not dead.

The door to Medicaid expansion was left open through an amendment in the House giving the Kasich Administration wide latitude to propose Medicaid reform including, potentially, expansion. While the Ohio Senate is unlikely to drop expansion into the budget, a special committee focusing on reforming Medicaid and Ohio’s health system already has begun meeting.

Accordingly, the need for the Buckeye Institute to continue educating policymakers on the many pitfalls associated with expanding Medicaid, and the alternatives to give the disadvantaged a hand up, rather than a hand out, remains.

And we continue to make the case, whether it is in our Medicaid Expansion: Myth Versus Reality, which dispels many of the common misconceptions about expanding Medicaid, or in a report co-authored by Robert Alt and Dan Greenberg, President of the Advance Arkansas Institute, explaining why Medicaid expansion is like the Hotel California—states can opt in, but they can never leave. And do take a look at our letter to the editor in the Toledo Blade that ran this past Sunday, which clearly and concisely makes the case for a more constructive discussion about the issue.

In addition, there have been major developments in the last few weeks that further highlight why Ohio should not expand Medicaid. First, the Obama Administration now plans to delay proposed cuts to hospitals that provided one of the rationales in favor of expansion.

Second, a new academic study published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine outlined that those participating in a pre-ObamaCare Medicaid expansion in Oregon did not see significant improvements in health outcomes, another of the major rationales offered by expansion advocates.

Following up on this in National Review, the Manhattan Institute’s Avik Roy devastates arguments made by many expansion advocates, including some in the Kasich Administration, who suggest that academic studies that show that health outcomes for those on Medicaid are no better and often worse than for those without any insurance at all somehow are unworthy of discussion.

Ohioans deserve better than Medicaid expansion—a doubling-down on a federal program that not only is fiscally unsound, but that fails those that it is supposed to help.