The News on 6 in Tulsa reported last week on Oklahomans who lack health insurance. OK Policy’s David Blatt was featured in the story, available here in both print and video, describing who is likely to be uninsured and explaining how care for the uninsured drives up premium costs for everybody. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past two years,  Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland has been spearheading an extensive effort known as the State Coverage Initiative (SCI) to develop a plan to extend health insurance coverage to a sizable segment of the 640,000 Oklahomans who are currently uninsured. SCI has recently released a blueprint report setting out its main recommendations.

The SCI report calls on the state to maximize existing opportunities for covering the uninsured through the Insure Oklahoma premium assistance program and to create new publicly-subsidized commercial health plans, which would attempt to control costs either by capping annual benefit limits or by waiving current state mandate requirements. The report proposes funding expanded coverage through a broad-based provider fee that would begin at a modest 0.5 percent of revenues.
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