Ohio’s two major candidates for governor claim they have the cure for voters’ problems with health care. The Statehouse News Bureau has been looking at how Democrat Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy compare on different issues, such as health care.
Amy Acton is a medical doctor who specialized in pediatrics and served as Ohio’s health director during the early days of the COVID pandemic. She announced her campaign for governor in January 2025, and said a year later that high healthcare costs are forcing too many Ohioans into medical debt. So she said she wants the state to buy that debt and forgive it.
“Medical debt is the largest cause of bankruptcy. Health care costs are rising right now for everyone, and a governor has a lot of levers," Acton said in an interview in January 2026 after introducing her running mate David Pepper.
Vivek Ramaswamy graduated from Harvard with a degree in biology and is the founder of a biotech company. He said health care costs are soaring for everyone because of Medicaid fraud. In May, he announced he’ll make it a top priority to negotiate with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), to bring 65 cents of every fraud dollar found back to Ohio - though the state only gets 35 cents back now, because the federal government pays 65% of Medicaid costs.
“My plan would bring $3.1 billion of those savings right back here to Ohio," Ramaswamy said. "That's $3.1 billion more that goes into pockets of Ohioans through copay assistance, through bringing down health insurance premiums, through other plans that we have, through expanding the value of health savings accounts.”
Both candidates also have health care plans that have gotten less attention. Acton said at a roundtable in Steubenville in August that she wants to save Ohioans money on their prescription drugs with a new program called Ohio RX.
“We're trying to do some of that work for Ohioans and try to lower drug costs and sort of do sort of, a Mark Cuban-esque like sort of program to make, to get more options. So that's something we're looking at coming right into office," Acton said.
Ramaswamy has worked with bringing new drugs to market, and said he's interested in helping Ohioans access drugs that are still in clinical trials. So he said earlier this month he'd push for so-called "right to try" legislation.
"I believe that, in certain circumstances, patients should be able to, on a fully informed basis and in a relationship between them and their physician, to access therapies that are still investigational but nonetheless have the potential to help them, particularly if they suffer from terminal or life-threatening conditions," Ramaswamy told the Columbus Metropolitan Club.
But Ramaswamy’s work with drug trials has led to criticism from Acton and her allies in campaign ads like one from a group backed by the Democratic Governors Association. The ad titled "Conman" is based on allegations that Ramaswamy's biotech company inflated the value of an Alzheimer's drug it purchased that had failed previous trials. Acton's running mate David Pepper told reporters in August that investors ended up losing millions while Ramaswamy profited.
“Hucksters, false hope, false hype, it never adds up, but it exploits everyday people while he gets rich,” Pepper said as he spoke about Ramaswamy.
Fact-checkers have said it’s unclear whether Ramaswamy knowingly misled investors or made hundreds of millions of dollars while his company’s stock dropped. Ramaswamy vehemently denies the claims from Acton’s campaign and her supporters, as he did at the Columbus Metropolitan Club on Oct. 14.
“Her criticisms of me, including my successful attempts and some failed attempts to develop successful drugs along the way, are false. They are slander. If I weren't a politician, they would be actionable, slanderous, libelous accusations," Ramaswamy said from the stage.
Ramaswamy touted the endorsement he received from the Ohio State Medical Association’s political action committee. Its president Gary Katz said Ramaswamy would “bring joy back to the practice of medicine through reducing unnecessary regulatory and administrative burdens.” Ramaswamy also cut an ad with Columbus area ophthalmologist Dr. Alice Epitropoulos.
But the Acton campaign said Epitropoulos is also Ramaswamy’s neighbor and a donor to his campaign. A group of more than a thousand doctors signed a letter backing Acton, saying the OSMA PAC’s endorsement was not a vote of Ohio physicians, and they’re concerned that Ramaswamy could limit access to Medicaid and Medicare since he’s said in the past that those programs were a mistake. Ramaswamy has said those comments were taken out of context.
