| Mike Turner cast the deciding vote to gut Medicaid from more than 18,000 hardworking Ohioans in his district, and rip food off the table of 40,000 OH-10 families. Now, Dayton residents are at his doorstep calling out his cruelty.
Last week, protestors took to Turner’s Dayton office to expose the devastating impacts of his vote for the Big, Ugly Bill. One expectant mother said Turner’s cuts put her prenatal care at risk. Other residents described the impossible math of losing benefits while rent and grocery bills keep climbing.
As Dayton resident Julia Price put it: “We put Mike Turner in office thinking that he would provide the votes that we needed to get the things that we needed.”
Instead, he voted to take them away — $33 billion out of Ohio’s Medicaid program over the next decade, plus hundreds of millions more from SNAP.
The kicker? When reporters asked Turner to explain himself, his office couldn’t even be bothered to respond.
DCCC Spokesperson Riya Vashi:
“Ohio families are drowning — losing their health care, struggling to put food on the table, scared to open their bills — and Mike Turner has nothing to say for himself. Turner sold out his district, and in November, OH-10 voters are going to send him packing.”
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Dayton Daily News: Dayton residents decry Medicaid, SNAP cuts
- Thousands of Dayton-area residents could be impacted by changes to federal programs that provide food assistance or medical care, and local residents say anxiety is building in the midst of high living costs.
- Dayton resident Julia Price said she’s frustrated.
- “We are neighbors. We are friends, we’re mothers and fathers, we all want to have a good life,” Price said. “We all want our families to have a good life and we put (U.S. Representative) Mike Turner in office thinking that he would provide the votes that we needed to get the things that we needed.”
- Price and more than a dozen people associated with advocacy groups like the Working Families Party, Popular Democracy and the Black Women’s Health Initiative gathered outside Turner’s downtown Dayton office Thursday afternoon, April 16, to talk about how changes to federal medical and food assistance programs could impact people living in Montgomery County.
- The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump last year, is estimated to cut $1 trillion over the next decade from the Medicaid program, and billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Turner was among Ohio’s federal lawmakers who voted in favor of the federal spending package.
- Turner’s Office did not immediately return a request for comment about the cuts.
- Mariah Adu said she’s a Medicaid recipient. Her health insurance covers the care she needs during her pregnancy. “All of my prescriptions, vitamins, prenatal pills, I’ve been getting it through Medicaid,” she said. “And it’s not because I’m not working towards anything better for my life, but it’s just where I am right now, and I know a lot of people are in a similar position.”
- The Health Policy Institute of Ohio estimates that nearly one in four Ohioans are enrolled in Medicaid. That same group estimates that Ohio is expected to lose about $33 billion over the next decade for the Medicaid program.
- And according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, more than 1.4 million Ohioans — 76,000 of which are in Montgomery County — are SNAP recipients.
- Adu said thousands of people living in the Dayton area use programs like Medicaid and SNAP to survive. She fears cuts to both programs would disproportionately impact children and their mothers, as well as older Ohioans.
- “What’s at stake is people’s livelihood, people’s health, and their ability to live healthy lives,” Adu said.
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