Bill of particulars illinois5/21/2023 If that wouldn’t have happened, I think our legislature would still be fighting about it. It was bad health policy and bad fiscal policy to continue to refuse the federal offer of Medicaid expansion.įor Oklahoma, thankfully, it came through a ballot measure. There were no programs to cover them, because the industry (nationally) assumed they were covered by Medicaid. There was a huge population in my state that didn’t have coverage for healthcare because of our refusal to accept Medicaid expansion. The deal was done.Īt that point (literally almost the day after the 2018 elections for me) every thoughtful Republican State Legislator had to start transitioning in their mind. They would literally be voting to pull healthcare away from people. ![]() No senator in DC could ever vote to end the program once their state was receiving the dollars. The moment a majority of the states accepted expansion was the point of no return. The amount of money this program brings to a state is incredible, and once you start receiving the money, there is not really any way a state could ever wean itself from the federal subsidy without “harming” hundreds of thousands of their citizens. They didn’t even really try to do it! When Pelosi took the gavel back, I realized that Medicaid Expansion was here to stay. Republicans had two years of total control in DC, and they didn’t do it. Repeal and replace was a big reason I supported Trump in 2016 even though I had a lot of moral issues with him he was the guy with the balls to do it. I was 100% opposed to ObamaCare (and still think it is bad policy and fiscally unsustainable). This is a great article! As a Republican legislator and Chair of Health and Human Services in Oklahoma, I went through this exact transition in 2018.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |