The debate on e-cigarettes lights up (Guest Post: Breanca Thomas)

Breanca Thomas is a PhD student in Health Promotion Sciences in the College of Public Health at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and a 2013-14 OK Policy Research Fellow. She intends to pursue a research career focusing on… Read more [More...]

Oklahoma could hike fees on the poorest and sickest citizens

This year’s state budget will be tough for most state services, but one of the biggest losers is Oklahomans who are insured through Medicaid. The FY2015 budget appropriates flat funding to the Oklahoma Health Care Authority (OHCA), which administers Oklahoma’s… Read more [More...]

Court-ordered monitors find Oklahoma falling short in efforts to fix foster care system

Almost two years after finalizing an historic plan to transform its child welfare system, a new report finds that the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS) is falling short of making “good faith efforts to achieve substantial and sustained progress”… Read more [More...]

Commissioner Doak’s press release on marketplace enrollment costs is inaccurate, disingenuous

Last week, Oklahoma State Insurance Commissioner John Doak’s office released a statement blasting the cost to enroll Oklahomans in health insurance on the federal marketplaces. Commissioner Doak’s statement is both disingenuous and inaccurate. His conclusions about the cost per enrollee… Read more [More...]

STATEMENT: Budget deal is fiscally irresponsible, hurts Oklahoma’s most vulnerable citizens

Oklahoma Policy Institute released the following statement in response to Oklahoma’s FY 2015 budget deal: The budget deal is fiscally irresponsible and will do serious harm to Oklahoma’s most vulnerable citizens and those who care for them. Even in a… Read more [More...]

‘Get a job?’ Get a clue

In a recent debate sponsored by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Forbes blogger and Manhattan Institute Fellow Avik Roy argued against expanding Medicaid in Oklahoma to provide coverage  for the 140,000 working-age Oklahomans with incomes below the federal poverty… Read more [More...]

Critics of Medicaid expansion aren’t telling the whole story

  Opponents of accepting federal funds to expand health coverage in Oklahoma have recently been citing a report from the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), a think tank based out of Florida. The report claims that states should refuse federal… Read more [More...]

Additional Navigator regulations are unwarranted, unnecessary

The central tenet of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) is to bring access to quality, affordable health care to as many Americans as possible, primarily by enrolling them in private health insurance or Medicaid. Central to the Affordable… Read more [More...]

Medicaid on the chopping block

Download the TogetherOK fact sheet: SoonerCare Cuts Threaten Oklahoma’s Health Just prior to the start of the legislative session we ran a blog  post titled “Avoiding devastating health care cuts will require hard choices.” Two-and-a-half  months later, as legislative leaders… Read more [More...]

“I don’t know where we go from here”: Community health centers caught in limbo

Community Health Connection, a Tulsa-based community health center, uses a sliding scale to determine patient payments. The minimum is $25 per appointment. Jim McCarthy, Community Health Connection’s CEO, estimates that more than two in every three patients seen by his… Read more [More...]