Budget & Tax, Health Care, Good Government
Free Market Friday: Invention of a crisis
May 27, 2016
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?