“Amending the Oklahoma Constitution will prevent the Republican-controlled Legislature, which has resisted Medicaid expansion for a decade, from tinkering with the program or rolling back coverage. Missouri voters also will decide on a constitutional amendment on Aug. 4.”
Nice job!
“To help fund the proposal, the Legislature is expected to increase a fee that hospitals pay from 2.5% to 4%…” Yes, but the hospitals will probably save many times what the increased fee is in the reduction of un-recompensated charity cases. And as they say, if it keeps your little rural hospital in business, priceless.
Yes, those blankety blank blank liberals that made the difference.
I did notice that several counties that have large Native American populations came really close to passing the question. So Billy Sue and her husband Billy Bob will be saved by liberals and Native Americans.
Have you seen Rebel Wilson’s movie The Hustle?
“To help fund the proposal, the Legislature is expected to increase a fee that hospitals pay from 2.5% to 4%, which would generate about $134 million annually. Stitt vetoed such a measure earlier this year.”
To punish the poor and the voters for expanding Medicaid in the state, the OK Republican Legislature is expected to raise the cost of providing health care.
FIFY
No, but I looked it up and it looks like fun!
After the murder of Eric Harris one would have thought that Oklahoma learned that the state must tax if it wants to provide basic services from policing to schools to hospitals to roads and everything else a state is required to do to provide basic services for its people.
One of the most inexcusable and forgotten murder of a Black man by police occurred in Oklahoma BECAUSE the state did not want to tax its citizens to pay police.
The case I am talking about was a 73 year old retired insurance salesman with NO police training or experience but in return for giving the Tulsa sheriff’s office some money was given the title “volunteer sheriff’s deputy” and allowed to carry a gun and accompany the police on calls. On one such call where police had a suspect pinned to the ground claiming he was reaching for the taser they gave him but instead the 73 year old pulled his gun and murdered the man the police had pinned to the ground.
That is because Oklahoma refused to tax its citizens to pay for basic services like policing, the Tulsa Sheriff was forced to rely on old retired White guys well passed the age of any “cop on the beat” who in return for helping fund the department would get to live out their childhood fantasy of playing cops and robbers only with real guns and real people.
Now Oklahoma Republicans are saying the state cannot afford to pay 10% of the cost of insuring 250,000 of its residence. Well NO KIDDING, you might have to raise taxes to pay that 10%. Any rational state government would have done this a decade ago.
How long did it take the Florida 'pukes to kill the popular bill to restore voting rights?
ETA: re the OK shooting story: Neighbors quoted “But he was said to mostly keep to himself.”
Isn’t that the same thing the neighbors of every serial killer / gun nut madman say when he (and it is always a he) goes off and commits their crime?
About as long as it took the Repuke-dominated state legislature in Michigan to decide that the strongly passed (2/3) ballot initiative for non-partisan re-drawing of voting districts in the state…?
Only the modern Republican Party can make such a question close.
I wonder how many poor people this is intended to help voted against it. My wife has an uncle who was injured at work and has been unable to work for years. He destroyed his back. The man can hardly walk. He and his wife are dirt poor. They both were absolutely against the ACA. They both feared government overreach with it and didn’t like that freeloaders (poor people) may get something for nothing. Today, of course, they take full advantage of the ACA whenever possible.
It is interesting to see how common sense and survival instinct can overcome conservative ideology when it comes down to a life and death decision.
Well, one of the “vote no” ads claimed that it would give Nancy Pelosi control over our health care. Rural counties voted no, but urban counties voted yes. When you consider how many hospitals have closed over the past few years, I can only assume that people are willing to die in order to get back at Pelosi.
Don’t forget the shooting of the man whose car had broken down, and who had his hands in the air,. but he wasn’t lying on the ground fast enough, and the officer thought that he was reaching for his car window, so she shot him. That’s not a “donor gets to carry gun” situation, but it was certainly a lack of training situation.
So many people will get better healthcare in spite of themselves. Hopefully the end result will seep into their lives and while they go on hating that socialist Obamacare, they’ll like The Medicaid cause they have a right to it and their taxes paid for it, doncha know…
Shot without warning, and if there isn’t a law for that there had better be one soon. Ten to one he flies those flags like he puts out deer bait.
It really is, and not just on its own merits. The cities outvoted the rural block (who nevertheless are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries, if some of those small-town hospitals can now remain open).
Was the Tulsa County Sheriff Department really underfunded? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that case made. The rich donor wanted to cosplay as an LEO, so they happily took his money. Not much different than letting wealthy donors hang out on the field at college football practices: it’s hard to make the case that it’s because those programs “need” the money.
IF the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Department was really underfunded is to some extent a subjective question. I only know that the program to allow for "“volunteer sheriff’s deputy” was based on the assertion that it needed the money.
Oklahoma was settled, both voluntarily and involuntarily, by people who had ample reason to distrust the federal government. There’s a skepticism in their bones that has been successfully nurtured into a selfish and self-defeating mean streak.
We had an interesting discussion many years ago, with Billy Bragg of all people, about early Oklahoma socialism. Despite the name, it had way more in common with Tea Party populism than with the Bernie-style socialism of today. This article, exact four years old, gives a quick overview. (Delete the cookie if you need access, sorry about the paywall.)