Bill Expanding ‘Insure Oklahoma’ Program Passes Senate Committee

Feb. 18--OKLAHOMA CITY – A Senate bill seeking to expand the ‘Insure Oklahoma’ program advanced out of committee on Monday morning.

Greg McCortney, R-Ada, directs the Oklahoma Healthcare Authority to implement “the Oklahoma Plan” within Insure Oklahoma. According to Sen. McCortney, the intent is to provide insurance to Oklahomans who qualify for Medicaid but are currently not insured.

“The biggest reason this is necessary is, this plan would cover a little over 200,000 people,” Sen. McCortney told News 4. “The Oklahoma Plan, what it is, is being able to use private insurance to take care of and manage the healthcare costs for our population, so instead of asking the state agency to do that and state agencies traditionally don’t do that well, we’re going to go out to the private market and let private companies do that.”

The proposed measure unanimously passed the Senate Retirement and Insurance Committee by a 9 -0 vote, though it did not come without questions.

“At some point, if the federal government reduces its match, what is our obligation and can we afford it as a state?” questioned Sen. Gary Stanislawski. “Senator McCortney had stated that the Legislature would have to affirmatively approve any continuation in the event the federal government changes any rule to our waiver if they – six years from now decided, disapprove the waiver then the Legislature has to affirmatively vote for continuation, so that gives some safeguards to us.”

If passed by the full Legislature and signed into law, McCortney said it could cost Oklahoma about $141 million to implement the program with more than $1 billion coming in from the federal government. The cost to implement would not come from a tax increase, he said.

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