OKPOLICY.ORG
What’s up this week at Oklahoma Policy Institute? The Weekly Wonk is dedicated to this week’s events, publications, and blog posts.
This week OK Policy released a paper showing that state costs under the new federal health care law are likely to be modest and could even yield net savings. 
Click here to access a 1-page summary of our issue brief: Health Care Reform and the State Budget: Savings Likely to Partly or Fully Offset Modest New Costs.
OK Policy testified this week before the Joint Committee on the Federal Health Care Law. Click here for our presentation exploring Oklahoma’s options for implementing state health insurance exchanges, a major requirement of the new law. Read the Tulsa World’s coverage of our paper along with a summary of the committee meeting.
OK Policy intern Emily Callen explains why higher education remains a strong investment for Oklahomans and the state as a whole. Yesterday’s OK Policy Blog points to evidence that the state’s personal income tax has very little to do with businesses’ decisions to locate in Oklahoma or elsewhere. Oklahoma Policy Institute was mentioned in a NewsOK piece that called for thorough, numbers-based analysis, not platitudes, in the tax reform debate.
In the Know, Policy Notes
- Economist Mark Thoma explains in MSN Money why we have room to spread the wealth without harming efficiency and growth.
- Economist Nancy Folbre discusses gender differences in economic hardship during the recession.
- An economic historian shows that consumer spending, amplified by government outlays, are what created most growth in the last century, not business investment.
- Stateline reports on how Oregon may become the next national health care model for seeking to control costs while improving public health through community care.
- A new report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds that the Affordable Care Act will not adversely affect employer-sponsored health insurance coverage.
- 533 – Number of operating school districts in Oklahoma for the 2010-2011 school year, 9th most in the nation.
- 5.9 percent – Oklahoma’s unemployment rate for September 2011, up slightly from the previous month’s rate of 5.6 percent.
- 3,632 – Number of bankruptcy filings in Oklahoma during the 2nd quarter of this year, down 14 percent from the same quarter in 2010.
- 58 – Number of USDA certified organic farms in Oklahoma, representing just one half of one percent of the 10,903 certified organic farms in the United States in 2008.
