Recent Articles

Tribes and the Recovery Act

In addition to the multiple funding streams made available to state governments by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), tribal governments are also in line to receive substantial assistance for programs serving Native Americans. This website of the National… Read more [More...]

Falling short?

Oklahoma’s Constitution includes several fiscally prudent budgeting measures aimed at averting or minimizing budget shortfalls.  One of these is the 95 percent appropriations rule: the Legislature may only appropriate up to 95 percent of the certified estimate for the upcoming… Read more [More...]

Safeguarding Medicaid eligibility in the budget downturn

During the last state fiscal crisis, from 2002 -04, funding for Oklahoma’s Medicaid program was hit hard. In FY ’02 and FY ’03, as revenues began to plummet, the Oklahoma Health Care Authority (OHCA) put coverage of almost all non-mandatory… Read more [More...]

Less bang for the tax cut buck

Mickey’s Musings, the policy blog of UCO Economics Professor Mickey Hepner, is consistently one of the best local sources for credible information and thoughtful opinion on economic and fiscal issues facing Oklahoma and the nation. One of Mickey’s favorite themes,… Read more [More...]

The sky is slowly descending!

“The sky is falling!” clearly would make a more compelling headline, but in the case of state agencies trying to deal with the  continuing pressures of rising costs, increasing responsibilities, and flat funding, the reality is less dramatic but no… 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...]

Solving a problem or creating one?

The Tulsa World penned a strong and persuasive editorial on the voter ID proposal, SB 4,  that has now passed both legislative chambers and is now awaiting action by the Governor. Supporters of the legislation try to argue that requiring… Read more [More...]

Take the money

A new OK Policy issue brief looks at the federal stimulus funding that is being made available to states that adopt a number of modest reforms to their Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs. As the number of jobless workers claiming UI… Read more [More...]

Whack-a-bill

This session, OK Policy has been involved with a coalition of organizations and individuals promoting an increase in the Sales Tax Relief credit, commonly known as the grocery tax credit.  The existing credit, intended to offset the state sales tax… Read more [More...]

Access to care and quality of care

Recently, The Oklahoman criticized OK Policy for our opposition to a proposal under legislative consideration that would waive existing state laws that require insurance companies to provide coverage of basic health benefits as part of any policy for young adults.… Read more [More...]