GOP lawmakers pushing disguised version of Medicaid expansion?

May 13, 2013

OCPA president Michael Carnuccio recently pointed out in his Journal Record column that “Medicaid expansion, in any form, will be funded by Obamacare dollars.” Then last week in his Journal Record column, law professor Andrew Spiropoulos warned of “a potential last-minute creation of a legal vehicle for the expansion of the dysfunctional Medicaid program, a centerpiece of the president’s troubled health care scheme.”

Spiropoulos, who serves as the Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow at OCPA, says “the two Republican legislators most likely to try to persuade their colleagues and the governor to enact a disguised version of the Medicaid expansion have come forward with a last-ditch proposal to do just that. … Building on a similar proposal in Arkansas, they claim they want to direct the Oklahoma Health Care Authority to ask the federal government for permission to take the money for the expansion.” But there are two problems with their idea, Spiropoulos writes: “it really isn’t private insurance at all,” and “we’re unlikely to get the federal waiver.” I encourage you to read the entire column here.

It appears that that particular Medicaid expansion is dead for now, but rest assured that Oklahoma’s institutional Left, along with the crony capitalist/health-care-provider complex, is not giving up. As always, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.