License Plate

In 2007, Ohio MS Activists set to work to establish an MS Awareness license plate in Ohio and their efforts found victory on January 6, 2009 when Governor Ted Strickland signed Senate Bill 243 making the creation of the MS Awareness license plate law.

A special thank you goes out to Representatives Jay Goyal and Clifford Hite, who sponsored the legislation and saw it through to passage.

Congratulations to all of our MS Activists for your hard work. Your calls and visits to your legislators made a difference. However, your assistance is still needed. The license plate was available for purchase from the Ohio BMV on May 11, 2009. If you have already renewed your license plate for 2009 and wish to switch to the new plate, you can do so by paying the additional $25 charge plus a $5.39 fee.

To keep the license plates available, we need to sell or renew 500 each year. Not only will the purchase of these specialty license plates raise awareness of MS, proceeds will return to the Ohio chapters to assist with programs and services.

Health Insurance Reforms Come to Ohio

We applaud Ohio lawmakers for supporting changes to make health insurance available up to an additional 100,000 Ohioans by:

• Lowering premiums in the Open Enrollment Program, allowing 52,000 additional Ohioans with pre-existing conditions to afford health insurance in the individual market.
• Allowing dependents up to age 28 to be covered by family health insurance policies at no cost to employers, if they have been continuously covered -- providing a coverage option to an age grop that is generally healthy yet has the highest rate of being uninsured.
• Providing cafeteria plans for uninsured employees of small businesses to buy coverage with pre-tax dollars, saving these workers up to 30 percent of hte premium cost.
• Requiring insurers to report the portion of premium dollars spent on health care compared to marketing, administration and profits -- vital information for making health care more affordable.

Congratulations to all of our MS Advocates for encouraging your lawmakers to include these reforms in the budget. Your voices were heard!