Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s “new way” of creating jobs has left something to be desired — namely, jobs. Kasich has killed projects that promised to create jobs in favor of policies that are sure to stunt job creation. Now with a state facing an overall loss of 400,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 9 percent, Kasich’s decision to slash state funding for Medicaid left 2,800 Ohioans who help the elderly and disabled out of a job:

A separate survey of 385 Ohio nursing homes found that 2,800 jobs had been eliminated between July 1 and Sept. 1 — or soon would be — following a 6 percent budget cut to the state’s Medicaid program, the tax-funded health-insurance program for the poor and disabled.

Kasich’s cuts result from his desire to “rebalance” the amount of funding spent on Ohio seniors and the disabled. Hoping to shift towards “in-home care,” state officials say the nursing-home job loss is “not surprising.” But, as FamiliesUSA notes, funding Medicaid is a sure-fire way to ensure economic growth and job creation.

According to the Ohio Health Care Association, mostly nurses and nursing assistants “who provide hands-on care to patients” are the ones who have lost their jobs. Other nursing homes have “frozen or cut workers’ pay, as well as freezing or cutting benefits.” Nursing home officials worry that these cuts will affect patient care. Five homes have already closed since the budget cuts began.

And given the similar obsession with budget hacking among Republican governors and lawmakers, Ohio is just the beginning. According to the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care, “Ohio is ground zero for what will be coming for the rest of the country.” There are also federal Medicare cuts pending due to overpayment that will affect jobs in the state.

The Senate decided last week to keep in place a policy that denies abortion coverage for military rape victims who became pregnant as a result of their sexual assault. Female service members who fight and die for their country are not extended the same rights as civilian government employees, who can use their government-funded insurance to pay for abortion if they’re victims of rape or incest, or even rape survivors in prison who receive government-funded abortion coverage.

Rape is rampant in the military, with nearly one in three women sexually assaulted while serving. Yet the Senate declined to vote on Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s (D-NH) amendment that would restore abortion coverage and give military rape victims the same options as civilians and prisoners.

Anti-abortion activists are cheering the decision, and the conservative group Concerned Women for America had some particularly infuriating things to say about the Senate’s inaction:

Concerned Women for America (CWA) revealed exactly how little concern they have for actual women, much less for America, this week when they sent out a letter attacking women who defend our country for having the nerve to believe they deserve full medical care after being raped.

The mind-bogglingly vicious swipe at female soldiers had a couple of doozies, including the claim that allowing raped service members to access abortion “serves as a political distraction” from national security, as if it’s in the interest of national security to subject raped service members to forced childbirth. [...]

But in a letter dripping with congratulatory faux concern and naked disregard for female service members who have been raped, the most attention-grabbing quote was this: Women deserve better than simply being given abortion as a ‘cure-all.’

CWA also described being raped and forced to bear a rapist’s child as merely “difficult circumstances” requiring “compassion and support.”

The Senate’s cowardice in refusing to even bring the amendment to a vote is also disappointing. Declining to vote on a measure is a sneaky tactic that effectively kills the amendment, but allows senators to avoid going on the record denying rights to service members. Earlier this year a Republican-led House committee also shot down a Democratic measure like Shaheen’s.

According to very conservative Defense Department numbers, fewer than 20 percent of military sexual assaults are reported, and only 8 percent of assailants are prosecuted — in no small part because of the military’s pervasive blame-the-victim culture.

The Rick Perry campaign is out with a new ad linking both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney to the individual mandate included in the Affordable Care Act. Gingrich supported the requirement to purchase health care coverage from 1993 until declaring his candidacy for president in 2011 and Mitt Romney advocated for “personal responsibility” in health care as governor of Massachusetts. In 2009, he even suggested that it could serve as a model for the rest of the nation.

Watch Perry’s ad, which pledges to repeal health care reform:

Perry himself has come under fire from his fellow GOP candidates for signing a mandate that required teenage girls to receive vaccinates for HPV. In 2009, he also enacted the Texas Heart Attack Prevention Bill — which mandates insurance companies to pay for CT scans and ultrasound tests that can detect heart disease — after receiving considerable funds from a pharmaceutical company that stood to benefit from it. Medical experts warned that the tests were “a terrible waste of health care dollars” since “there is little evidence that the tests [Perry mandated] can improve people’s health.”

It’s unclear how Perry could live up to his promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act without Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate, however. Last week, he repeatedly insisted that the president has the authority to block the implementation of the measure, despite a recent Congressional Research Service report finding to the contrary.

Ohio Republicans leapfrogged other states in crafting what could be the most radical anti-choice bills in the nation, the “heartbeat” bill. Passed in the state house this summer, the bill bans abortions if a fetal heartbeat can be detected — an occurrence that can happen “six to seven weeks into a pregnancy” or before many women even knows their pregnant. The measure contains no exceptions for victims of rape, incest, or for the mental health of a woman.

To convince the state House Health Committee of the bill’s merits, activists recruited the youngest witness ever to “testify”: a nine-week-old fetus. Unfortunately for the group, the sideshow failed, since the fetus’s heartbeat was pretty much undetectable. Several months later, and with the bill now before the state senate, Republicans brought in the nine-week-old baby that has developed from the fetal “witness” to act as a “silent witness“:

The only silent witness was Halley Carolina Glockner, an infant who was carried into the hearing room by a smiling Sen. Cliff Hite, R-Findlay. Halley’s mother, Erin Glockner of Pataskala, underwent an ultrasound exam during an appearance at a House committee meeting in March.

“You heard her heart then and now you can see her face and look into her eyes,” said Ducia Hamm, of the Ashland Care Center. “This child deserved to have her heart continue to beat.”

The Republican legislators refused to allow a woman who had been “making ‘pro-life’ choices” her whole life testify against the bill. She wanted to tell her story about how she had to end her pregnancy after learning of a fetal anomaly that was fatal.

Incidentally, not all of Ohio’s anti-choice activists support the bill. More radical local chapters are fleeing the Ohio Right to Life organization because the state group knows that the likely unconstitutional measure will be struck down by the Supreme Court. Ohio Right to Life said the bill is “likely to backfire” and set back their efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade.

President Obama publicly supported HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ decision to overrule the scientists at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and ban the over the counter sale of Plan B contraception to to women of all ages. Currently, Plan B One-Step and the generic brand Next Choice are available behind the counter to women 17 and older — meaning that they do not need a prescription but they have to ask a pharmacist for the drug.

Obama said he did not personally intervene in Sebelius’ decision, but explained that “as the father of two daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over the counter medicine.” Sebelius “could not be confident that a 10-year-old or 11-year-old going to a drug store would be able to, alongside bubble gum or batteriers be able to buy a medication that potentially if not used properly can have an adverse effect,” he said, adding, “I think most parents would probably feel the same way”:

OBAMA: When it comes to 12-year-olds or 13-year-olds, the question is, can we have confidence that they would potentially use Plan B properly and her judgment was that there was not enough evidence that this potentially could be used improperly in a way that had adverse health effects on those young people.

REPORTER: Do you support the decision?

OBAMA: I do.

Watch it:

But “every medical organization with expertise in the area supports the sale of emergency contraception to girls and women of all ages,” noting that women have sexual encounters before the age of 17, and a review of the data showed that “Plan B One-Step is safe and effective” for everyone. In fact, “Teva, the company seeking approval to sell the pill over-the-counter to all women without restrictions, presented data showing it tested the drug in 11-to-16-year-old girls.”

In fact, Obama’s decision to ignore the science on Plan B seems to contradict his own 2009 executive order, in which he pledged that “Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration on a wide range of issues, including improvement of public health.” At the time, the president explained that the order was necessary “To ensure that in this new Administration, we base our public policies on the soundest science; that we appoint scientific advisors based on their credentials and experience, not their politics or ideology; and that we are open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions.”

Mitt Romney’s campaign is stepping up their attacks against current GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich today over his criticism of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Medicare privatization plan. In a press release to reporters, Gail Gitcho, Romney’s communications director, charged, “Speaker Gingrich’s attack on Paul Ryan’s plan as ‘right-wing social engineering’ – and then denying his own attack before doubling down on it – is the kind of Washington politics that Americans are tired of.”

Romney backers John Sununu and former Sen. Jim Talent also insisted on a press call with reporters that Romney “recognized right away the features of Ryan’s plan” and embraced it. They portrayed Gingrich’s Medicare proposal as not a “substantive change” from the current system and again slammed the former speaker for his criticism of the Ryan proposal.

But as much as Romney may hope to out gun Gingrich on Medicare privatization, both candidates have backed away slightly from Ryan’s proposal, but share the same policy objectives: to reduce federal expenditures in Medicare by capping the amount seniors will have to spend for traditional Medicare or private insurance, irrespective of actual health care costs.

For months, Romney refused to fully embrace Ryan’s plan. “As president, Romney’s own plan will differ, but it will share those objectives,” a September campaign proposal stated. He followed up in October with, “You have a program like Paul Ryan has proposed, which says we’re going to give people vouchers to let them choose among private plans. I would not at the same time would want to remove the option for people who have standard Medicare.” His proposal reflects this view.

Gingrich — who famously proclaimed that he would like to see Medicare “wither on the vine” — has supported Medicare privatization since at least 1995 and had said that he would have voted for Ryan’s plan. In an effort to limit the conservative blowback following his comments on Meet the Press, Gingrich even proposed kick-starting premium support “this year“: “I would offer on a voluntary basis, a supplement plan, a voucher—I wouldn’t call it a voucher—but some kind of support plan this year,” Gingrich told conservatives.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has not taken too kindly to journalists who ask him about his record, especially regarding his Massachusetts health care plan. In what he characterized as an “overly aggressive” interview on Fox, Romney chided Brett Baier for noting that he often suggested his state health care plan was a model for the nation. “You’re wrong, Brett,” Romney barked. Washington Examiner reporter Byron York offered Romney a second chance to explain the benefits of his health care plan. Instead, he tried to laugh off the relevance of his signature achievement as an “exaggeration“:

BYRON YORK: Governor, on health care, you’ve often said that the health care plan that you’ve created in Massachusetts would be a good model for some other states. You said, “Maybe not every state, but most.”

ROMNEY: I don’t think I said “most,” but –

YORK: On “Meet the Press” in 2007.

ROMNEY: Oh did I? Did I make that exaggeration? [Laughs].

YORK: So, what are some of the states that today would benefit by adopting the system that you created in Massachusetts?

ROMNEY: In its entirety? Not very many. Because it’s not even perfect for Massachusetts.

In his defense, the numerous flip-flops make it hard to keep track. But Romney has definitively stated numerous times in the past that his health care plan would be a good model for the entire country. Via American Bridge:

At end of the day, Romney’s refusal to stand by his own support for his own policies offers another layer of backpedaling that only further undermines his candidacy. As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargeant notes, Romney ends up describing “his own past assertion about the success of his signature accomplishment — one that’s now politically inconvenient for him — as an ‘exaggeration’” that’s not even fit for his own state.