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In The Know is a daily synopsis of Oklahoma policy-related news and blogs. Inclusion of a story does not necessarily mean endorsement by the Oklahoma Policy Institute. You can sign up here to receive In The Know by e-mail.
Today you should know that Hobby Lobby will defy a federal law that requires employee health care plans to provide insurance coverage for types of contraception that the firm’s owners consider to be “abortion-causing drugs and devices.” The company could be subject to fines of up to $1.3 million a day beginning Tuesday. Oklahoma City gun store owners say the number of people buying guns, particularly military-style AR-15 semi-automatic rifles, is higher than it’s ever been.
State officials said fears of skyrocketing milk prices due to Congress’s failure to pass a farm bill are unfounded. The OK Policy Blog explained why the idea that Medicaid is providing health care to adults who are choosing not to work is simply mistaken. In the Journal Record, David Blatt discusses how refusing to join the Medicaid expansion leaves Oklahoma with few, if any, viable options to tackle our enormous health care challenges.
The number of people living in poverty in Tulsa County has increased 38 percent since 2000. OK Policy published a letter in The Oklahoman on why the state’s tax credit for horizontal drilling is past its usefulness. A longer version of this letter previously appeared on the OK Policy Blog.
The Tulsa World discussed a bill by Sen. Patrick Anderson that is based on preposterous conspiracy theories about the United Nations. The Number of the Day is the percentage of SoonerCare/Medicaid enrollees who are children, pregnant women, seniors, or people with disabilities. In today’s Policy Note, the Huffington Post profiled some of the hard-working Americans in low-income jobs who would continue to be denied health care in states that refuse to join the Medicaid expansion.
In The News
Hobby Lobby to defy federal law requiring contraception coverage for employees
Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby will defy a federal law that requires employee health care plans to provide insurance coverage for types of contraception that the firm’s owners consider to be “abortion-causing drugs and devices,” an attorney for the company said Thursday. With Wednesday’s rejection of an emergency stay of that federal health care law by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Hobby Lobby and sister company Mardel could be subject to fines of up to $1.3 million a day beginning Tuesday. “They’re not going to comply with the mandate,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of The Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the company. As for the potential fines, Duncan said, “We’re just going to have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Oklahoma City gun retailers report surge in sales
At H&H Shooting Sports Complex and similar stores, display cases that once were full of military-style rifles are empty. An FBI system for doing criminal background checks on prospective gun buyers is busier than ever. Public interest in purchasing guns appears sky-high. Some people are concerned about tighter gun regulations in 2013, and others feel they need to be armed against the kind of people responsible for highly publicized mass shootings, said Miles Hall, president and founder of H&H. “The largest gun sales in the history of the industry are happening,” Hall said. “With everything we’re hearing, December’s numbers will be off the charts.”
State officials say farm bill fears and skyrocketing milk prices unfounded
Fears that the price of milk and other commodities will skyrocket if a new farm bill or an extension of the current bill is not enacted by the end of the year are likely overstated, state Agriculture Secretary Jim Reese and 3rd District Congressman Frank Lucas said Thursday. Under the arcane rules of federal lawmaking, the failure to produce a new farm bill or extend the existing one will cause the Department of Agriculture to revert to a 1949 “permanent law” on price supports, or subsidies. Under the 1949 law, the price-support formula assumes production costs far higher than experienced by modern dairy farmers. Some have maintained that such action would cause milk prices to reach as much as $8 a gallon. But Lucas, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said no mechanism is in place for the USDA to carry out such an operation.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Graph of the Day: Off Medicaid and ‘back to work’?
Incoming House Speaker T.W. Shannon recently suggested that SoonerCare/Medicaid enrollees in Oklahoma should get “off of Medicaid and back to work.” The idea that the Medicaid program is providing health care to adults who are choosing not to work is simply mistaken: the vast majority of those enrolled are children and low-income women during pregnancy (74 percent), and seniors and people with disabilities (19 percent). Only 7 percent of Medicaid enrollees in Oklahoma are able bodied working-aged adults; such adults are only eligible if they have dependent children and earn less than $7,063/yr for a family of three.
Read more from the OK Policy Blog.
What’s the plan?
Last month Gov. Mary Fallin announced her decision to not extend health insurance coverage to uninsured low-income Oklahomans through the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid. She promised to develop an Oklahoma plan to reduce the number of uninsured and the costs of health care. That sure sounds good, but by slamming the door on the federal government’s health insurance expansion, Fallin is leaving Oklahoma with few, if any, viable options to tackle our enormous health care challenges. Currently, more than 600,000 Oklahomans, or one in six people, are without health insurance.
Read more from the Journal Record.
Tulsa County poverty rate rising steadily
In the past 12 years, poverty has expanded geographically in Tulsa County and deepened in areas where it already had a foothold, a World analysis of Census Bureau data indicates. In 1999, 28 percent of the Tulsa County population lived in census tracts with poverty rates higher than the state poverty rate at the time. Now, 34 percent of the Tulsa County population lives in census tracts with poverty rates higher than the current statewide poverty rate. Additionally, areas of the city that were impoverished in 1999 have seen rates climb since then, the analysis shows.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Drilling tax credit past its usefulness
“Tax revenue drop not a reason to end credit” (Our Views, Dec. 18) takes issue with a report by Oklahoma Policy Institute on why Oklahoma’s tax breaks for horizontal drilling have become unnecessary and unaffordable. The editorial wrongly paints OK Policy with positions it’s never taken. It doesn’t present a single argument to refute OK Policy’s criticism of these credits. The argument is simple: Tax exemptions created to encourage what were once novel and risky methods of drilling have become unnecessary and counterproductive now that these techniques are standard practice.
Previously: A response to The Oklahoman from the OK Policy Blog
Senator moves to thwart U.N.’s Agenda 21 ‘plot’
It seems almost preposterous, but there are still people out there who sincerely believe there is a plot by the United Nations to take over the United States and evidently Sen. Patrick Anderson, R-Enid, is one of them. The latest conspiracy theory making the rounds on the Internet is the U.N.’s Agenda 21, which is seen by some, including Anderson, as a way for the U.N. to somehow gain control of our land and dictate how it can be used. Anderson, a farmer, says he is concerned about the federal government forcing rules on a wide variety of things, including the creation of dust and how land can be used. Here’s a hint for the senator: Federal, state and local governments have been setting rules on how land can be used for a long time. Some call it zoning.
Read more from the Tulsa World.
Quote of the Day
Agenda 21 is a nonbinding document that is a comprehensive plan of global, national and local action to preserve the environment. It deals mostly with bike trails, mass transit, sustainable farming and energy conservation. That hardly sounds like a devious plan to take over the world.
–The Tulsa World editorial board, on a bill by Sen. Patrick Anderson, R-Enid, that seeks to ban membership in groups associated with the United Nations
Number of the Day
Percentage of SoonerCare/Medicaid enrollees who are children, pregnant women, seniors, or people with disabilities.
Source: Oklahoma Policy Institute
See previous Numbers of the Day here.
Policy Note
GOP Governors deny the poor health care in opposing Medicaid expansion
With no health insurance and not enough money for a doctor, Laura Johnson is long accustomed to treating her ailments with a self-written prescription: home remedies, prayer and denial. Over decades, she made her living assisting elderly people in nursing homes in jobs that paid just above minimum wage and included no health benefits. So even as her feet swelled to such an extent that she could no longer stuff them into her shoes, and even as nausea, headaches and dizziness plagued her, she reached for the aspirin bottle or made do with a teaspoon of vinegar. After she collapsed last year and landed in in a local emergency room, doctors diagnosed her with congestive heart failure, high blood pressure and hypothyroid. They ordered her not to work. She arranged a Social Security disability benefit, and she enrolled in Medicaid, the government-furnished insurance program for the poor. She used her Medicaid card to secure needed prescription medications. Her ailments stabilized. But this year, the state determined that the $819 a month she draws in disability payments exceed the allowable limit. By the federal government’s reckoning, her $9,800 annual income made her officially poor. But under the standards set by Louisiana, she was too well off to receive Medicaid.
Read more from The Huffington Post.
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