In a press conference today at the state Capitol, Governor Mary Fallin announced that the Obama Administration has granted Oklahoma a one-year extension for the Insure Oklahoma program.

While the most important issues in health care continue to be the widespread absence (with notable exceptions) of medical price transparency and inappropriate government intrusion into the healthcare sector, Governor Mary Fallin should be commended for obtaining permission from the Obama Administration to continue the Insure Oklahoma program for at least a year — without ceding ground on her pledge to refuse Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion dollars.

Insure Oklahoma is popular precisely because it includes the very things Obamacare doesn’t allow: work requirements, enrollment caps, cost sharing, and other responsible limitations. The fact that such a successful program was held hostage by the Obama Administration shows us why the State of Oklahoma must continue to become less dependent on the federal government rather than leaning on them more heavily by expanding a broken Medicaid system.

OCPA and many others in the state continue to encourage state leaders to refuse any form of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion — including ideas sketched out in the Leavitt Report — and to seek to operate Insure Oklahoma independent of any involvement from the federal government. Citizens and businesses need to know what they can expect, and the type of back-and-forth that we’ve endured of late shows just how shaky the federal government’s promises can be.

Kudos to Governor Fallin for standing up for Oklahoma. We encourage her and other state leaders to now take the next steps to truly reform health care in Oklahoma by championing medical price transparency, removing broken government health care regulations, and reforming Oklahoma’s expensive and broken Medicaid system.