Budget & Tax , Health Care , Good Government
Jonathan Small | May 27, 2016
Free Market Friday: Invention of a crisis
Jonathan Small
The predictions were dire. Nursing homes and hospitals would close. Pregnant women in labor wouldn’t receive care.
Thus the story told by state agency officials and lobbyists for big hospital corporations. The only way to prevent catastrophe was to raise taxes and massively expand Medicaid to able-bodied adults.
Since legislative leaders have produced a state budget, we can evaluate those claims.
The Legislature rejected both the tax hike and the Medicaid expansion. Yet funding will go up at the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, the state Medicaid agency. The sky is not going to fall. How can this be?
Jonathan Small
President
Jonathan Small, C.P.A., serves as President and joined the staff in December of 2010. Previously, Jonathan served as a budget analyst for the Oklahoma Office of State Finance, as a fiscal policy analyst and research analyst for the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and as director of government affairs for the Oklahoma Insurance Department. Small’s work includes co-authoring “Economics 101” with Dr. Arthur Laffer and Dr. Wayne Winegarden, and his policy expertise has been referenced by The Oklahoman, the Tulsa World, National Review, the L.A. Times, The Hill, the Wall Street Journal and the Huffington Post. His weekly column “Free Market Friday” is published by the Journal Record and syndicated in 27 markets. A recipient of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s prestigious Private Sector Member of the Year award, Small is nationally recognized for his work to promote free markets, limited government and innovative public policy reforms. Jonathan holds a B.A. in Accounting from the University of Central Oklahoma and is a Certified Public Accountant.