06/19/2025
Ohio Budget Bill Passes Out of Senate, Heads to Conference Committee for Final Touches
Last Wednesday, after several hours of floor debate, the Ohio Senate passed its version of HB 96, the two-year Ohio budget legislation, mostly on party lines. As was expected, the Ohio House refused to concur with the Senate’s changes to HB 96, which launched the budget conference committee process, in which a smaller group of legislators hash out the differences between the two chambers and make final decisions on the bill before it is sent to the governor’s desk for his signature. As a reminder, by law, the legislature must fully pass the state budget bill and provide it to Governor DeWine by June 30.
Among the major items up for discussion are various tax cut plans, school funding plans, and numerous other competing spending ideas.
Thankfully, during this year’s budget process, items pertinent to health care—which OSMA actively advocated on—fared quite well overall during the Senate process. This week, OSMA has communicated its urgent wishes to the members of the conference committee to retain language crafted in the Senate in the final iteration of HB 96.
Important issues at hand include items such as prohibiting insurers from charging health care providers fees for delivery of electronic payments (which we have separately supported as standalone legislation - SB 166), an allocation of funds for the expansion of graduate medical education residency program slots in psychiatry and family medicine, an inclusion of funding for the OhioSEE program (which would provide comprehensive eye exams and glasses for children in need in kindergarten through grade 3), along with several other provisions on our radar.
OSMA will continue to advocate in support of the practice of medicine through the remainder of the conference committee process in the next two weeks, and provide a detailed update upon final budget bill passage. Stay tuned for coverage of the FY 2026-2027 budget after it is signed into law by the governor!