Late Wednesday afternoon, Governor John Kasich signed legislation to allow medical professionals to receive continuing education credits for donating their time to provide charity medical care for low income and rural Ohioans who otherwise would not have access to quality healthcare services.

This law rewards medical professionals including doctors and nurses who want to help, and does not cost taxpayers any additional funding.

There is no sweeter music to our ears at Buckeye than good policy that solves real problems, helps people, and doesn’t cost taxpayer money.... To be honest, sometimes we even choke up and get teary thinking about saving taxpayer dollars. We’re policy geeks, we really can’t help it. It’s what we do.

We think about this stuff day and night so you can rest easy knowing that we’re looking out for you and coming up with innovative policy ideas that don't involve more government. Yikes...even just saying “more government” out loud gives us the heebie jeebies.

The Buckeye Institute first recommended this policy to legislators back in 2015 when we discussed several different ways to improve access to healthcare in Ohio. Buckeye later commended legislators for proposing our policy, and subsequently reminded them of the benefits of this awesome policy idea we had during lame duck. (If you don’t know what lame duck legislative sessions are—you aren’t alone—but we gave the history of the lame duck term here hoping to demystify it.)

By making charity care more rewarding for doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals to voluntarily serve low income and underserved patients, the amount of healthcare delivered to those Ohioans will increase at no cost to taxpayers. This is a superior alternative to expanding failed government programs, especially as those very same programs often deliver unacceptable results to those they claim to help.  

“Finding ways to increase healthcare services to those most in need is a major challenge that will require many policy changes. Buckeye is on it. Yesterday, Ohio embraced one of these helpful policy changes that we proposed in 2015, which takes a step down the road to improving healthcare for all Ohioans regardless of income or location,” said Rea S. Hederman Jr., executive vice president of The Buckeye Institute.

The Buckeye Institute is proud to be a national leader on healthcare policy issues, and is grateful for the efforts of both Representative Robert Sprague and Senator Peggy Lehner for taking up this important policy issue—and seeing it through to fruition. A hearty O-H to both of you!