Oklahoma Named Early Innovator: $54 million to build the best health care technology in the country

The ‘Oklahoma Health Insurance Exchange’ will begin serving as an online marketplace for individual and small group consumers to buy private insurance in 2014.  Online insurance exchanges – which we discussed in this recent blog post –  are one of… Read more [More...]

Health Care Reform (6): Implementing Insurance 'Exchanges'

This is the sixth in an ongoing series of posts examining the Affordable Care Act, including previous posts on the Temporary High Risk Pool and tax credits for small businesses.  You can also visit the health care reform page on… Read more [More...]

New Medicaid online enrollment puts Oklahoma out in front

“Is there anyone here from Oklahoma?” I was at a national conference of health care policy experts and advocates last month when the morning’s plenary speaker, Cindy Mann, Medicaid Director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, posed that… Read more [More...]

What's at stake: Medicaid under the budget knife

OK Policy has argued repeatedly  that next year’s budget outlook, with shortfalls equal to cuts of 12 percent across all agencies of state government above those already enacted this year, threatens to have catastrophic consequences for the state’s economy, businesses,… Read more [More...]

Hurry up and wait: Even with federal approval, Oklahoma coverage expansions left on hold

According to the latest U.S. Census figures, 565,000 Oklahomans, or 15.8 percent of the total population, were without health insurance in 2007-2008. The uninsured rate is just under 10 percent for children but over 20 percent for adults ages 18-64.… Read more [More...]

Evaluating SoonerCare

In the early 1990’s, faced with health care costs that were rising at unmanageable rates and widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of the state’s Medicaid program, the Oklahoma Legislature created the Oklahoma Health Care Authority (OHCA) as  a stand-alone agency… Read more [More...]