EDITORIAL: Ignore tactics deployed by opponents of Medicaid expansion

Nov. 24--Overwhelming support among Oklahomans for the long overdue expansion of Medicaid coverage in this state seems to have instilled a little fear in those who have blocked access to comprehensive health care to those who can least afford it.

Scare tactics have been used to diminish support for many things, and expanded access to health care is no exception. It was a tactic deployed before Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which provided states money to expand health care coverage to low-income individuals, and again during the dozens of attempts to repeal it.

Similar schemes were cooked up here to ensure Oklahoma remained one of a dwindling number of states -- there are only 14 today -- to refuse federal funding available for Medicaid expansion. Those tactics faltered as the human toll mounted, and residents undertook what their elected officials would not and moved it forward as an initiative petition.

As proponents of State Question 802 began gathering what turned out to be more signatures than to any previous initiative petition, opponents scrambled to find alternative options -- lawmakers assembled a task force and the governor has an idea he has yet to unveil. Now that those signatures have been certified and it appears all but certain voters will see the issue on a ballot, those who would rather it not seem to have fallen back to using scare tactics.

The latest is from a pharmacist turned lawmaker who warned about the prospect of hospital management companies with questionable reputations benefiting from Medicaid expansion. Using Haskell County Community Hospital as an example, the Broken Arrow Republican warned other lawmakers about how one of those companies effectively destroyed the hospital within months after it took over operations in 2017.

Like many rural Oklahoma hospitals struggling today for survival, Haskell County Community Hospital may not have had to hire a third-party management company had the state expanded Medicaid in 2014. With expanded coverage, it is expected an additional 200,000 Oklahomans who otherwise could not afford it would have health care coverage.

That coverage would ensure payments to rural hospitals like those in Haskell County, where unemployment rates are higher and household incomes are lower, when care is provided. When health care providers get paid, those who are insured generally are rewarded with lower premiums.

Oklahoma voters have come too far to be swayed now by last-minute options that either have not been thought through, have been tried and proven unsuccessful, or simply by scare tactics and false narratives. It's time for Oklahomans to bring some of those tax dollars they send to Washington back home and expand Medicaid.

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