Health Care
Kaitlyn Finley | October 23, 2020
More than half of Oklahoma children on Medicaid
Kaitlyn Finley
More than half of all Oklahoma children were enrolled in Medicaid last year, according to the Oklahoma Health Care Authority’s annual report.
The expenditures on behalf of the 595,000 children on SoonerCare, Oklahoma Medicaid program, totaled $1.05 billion in fiscal year 2019. Children whose parents make less than 210 percent of the federal poverty level (e.g., $55,044 for a four-person household) are eligible for Medicaid. The Oklahoma Health Care Authority’s report also noted that 57 percent of all births in Oklahoma were covered by SoonerCare.
Children under the age of 18 comprise approximately 60 percent of the nearly 1 million SoonerCare enrollees. SoonerCare’s total enrollment will increase significantly upon the expansion of Medicaid to able-bodied adults beginning next July.
Kaitlyn Finley
Policy Research Fellow
Kaitlyn Finley currently serves as a policy research fellow for OCPA with a focus on healthcare and welfare policy. Kaitlyn graduated from the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma in 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. Previously, she served as a summer intern at OCPA and spent time in Washington D.C. interning for the Heritage Foundation and the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.