Norman McNickle, city manager of Stillwater, Oklahoma, speaks on May 5, 2020. - In the face of ... [+]
Oklahoma voters are weighing whether to expand Medicaid via ballot initiative just as cases of the coronavirus strain Covid-19 are rising and President Trump schedules an arena-sized political rally in Tulsa.
The Oklahoma effort to become the 37th state to expand Medicaid when voters head to the polls June 30 is just the latest momentum in Republican-leaning states where lawmakers and governors have historically blocked efforts to expand health insurance coverage to more poor Americans under the Affordable Care Act.
Yet some see rising cases of Covid-19 as a wild card that could help win an expansion of Medicaid at the ballot box for about 200,000 Oklahomans at a time the pandemic is contributing to a loss in health insurance coverage. And potentially more could become eligible for Medicaid as unemployment rises and people lose their employee health benefits.
Oklahomans are worried about the rise in cases, particularly after restrictions were eased May 1 to re-open some aspects of business and public life. “Now, six weeks after May 1, you can see for yourself in the chart below that our new daily cases are climbing again.” Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt said on his Facebook page last week. “I am aware statewide numbers are significantly worse, but this is the picture in the Oklahoma City metro.”
Republicans and conservative groups worried that expansion could win in Oklahoma are beginning to ramp up a campaign against the State Question 802. A political action committee was recently formed by Republican leaning groups to derail the effort to expand Medicaid, press reports in Oklahoma said last week.
It’s unclear whether Trump will address the Medicaid expansion effort at his rally, which last week was re-scheduled to June 20, just 10 days before the ballot initiative will face voters.
Meanwhile, supporters of Oklahoma Medicaid expansion have been working with The Fairness Project, which has also been working on a November ballot initiative in Missouri in hopes those states will follow the lead of successful 2018 ballot initiatives in Nebraska, Idaho and Utah. Those states, like Maine in 2017, bypassed Republican governors and legislatures to expand Medicaid by public referendum.
The Fairness Project have said the “Yes on 802” effort would “put Medicaid expansion into the state’s constitution.”
Oklahoma has been one of 14 remaining holdout states that have already missed out on generous federal funding of the Medicaid expansion. From 2014 through 2016, the ACA’s Medicaid expansion population was funded 100% with federal dollars. The federal government still picks up 90% or more of Medicaid expansion through 2020. It’s a better deal than before the ACA, when Medicaid programs were funded via a much less generous split between state and federal tax dollars.
Opponents say Oklahoma cannot afford the expansion while supporters say, by not expanding Medicaid, the state is losing billions of federal dollars to other U.S. states.
“Expanding Medicaid would bring more than a billion of our dollars back to Oklahoma every year,” The Yes on 802 group says. “The money we pay in federal taxes now is already paying for healthcare in states like New York and California. It’s time to bring our tax dollars home to help Oklahomans instead — to boost our economy and keep our rural hospitals open, creating and saving good paying jobs right here in our state.”
