When you go to the polls on June 30, you will have an opportunity to vote for State Question 802, Medicaid expansion. As a hospital administrator, I have received questions about this in the past weeks and wanted to provide a few facts about the impact Medicaid expansion will have on our community and on Cordell Memorial Hospital.
Medicaid expansion in Oklahoma would provide health insurance coverage to Oklahomans who earn less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level (less than $17,000 for an individual or less than $29,000 for a family of three). This would amount to coverage for nearly 200,000 Oklahomans.
A recently released study commissioned by the Oklahoma Hospital Association shows that passage of this state question would bring home more than a billion of Oklahomans’ tax dollars every year from Washington, D.C., money that’s currently going to 36 other states that have already expanded Medicaid.
The study showed that beyond delivering health care to nearly 200,000 Oklahomans, the return of those funds would create an additional 27,280 new jobs, generate $15.6 billion in new economic activity, and add a projected $6.7 billion in labor income in the first five years. It also would generate almost half a billion dollars in new state and local tax revenues, the report finds.
Currently, just shy of one in five working age Oklahomans is without health insurance coverage, making Oklahoma the state with the second highest uninsured rate in the U.S. at 19.7 percent. The uninsured in Oklahoma mostly include low-income working adults in service-industry jobs. These individuals often put off seeking medical attention until significant damage has been done to their health, then seek urgent care in the most expensive setting, the emergency room.
As you go to the polls on June 30 or request your absentee ballot by the June 24 deadline, I hope these facts will be helpful to you in this important decision.