Before Oklahomans foolishly enshrine a new, unfunded and unlimited entitlement into our state constitution (SQ802), we ought to heed the experience of our neighbors to the east. On May 13, 2020, when the Oklahoma legislature was debating a Medicaid expansion bill, Arkansas State Representative Josh Miller, a Republican, wrote a...
Posted by Michael Bates on June 27, 2020 11:01 AM
The only state question on the June 30, 2020, primary ballot is Oklahoma State Question 802. This would create a new Constitutional Amendment, Article XXV-A, requiring the State of Oklahoma to offer Obamacare Medicaid expansion coverage to anyone below a certain income, regardless of the person's work or family status....
Posted by Michael Bates on June 21, 2020 8:12 PM
In his Tuesday blogpost, Trent England of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs answers seven questions about "Medicaid Rebalancing", a proposal currently before the Oklahoma legislature. It is an attempt at passing the Obamacare Medicaid expansion, previously rejected by Oklahoma under a different guise, for a short-term benefit (extra federal...
Posted by Michael Bates on May 11, 2016 6:08 PM
Jonathan Gruber is the MIT economics professor, often called the "architect of Obamacare," who has said publicly that Obamacare's passage owed much to the "stupidity of the American people" and that its authors necessarily obfuscated the impacts on taxpayers in order to get the bill passed. "Lack of transparency is...
Posted by Michael Bates on November 13, 2014 5:49 PM
Friday, at Americans for Prosperity's Defending the American Dream Summit in Dallas, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt sat down with the BatesLine team for a wide-ranging conversation about the issues that his office is pursuing on behalf of Oklahomans. Pruitt discussed the EPA's proposed expansion of the definition of "waters...
Posted by Michael Bates on September 1, 2014 3:01 PM
Yesterday, the Oklahoma Legislature convened for the 2014 session, and Gov. Mary Fallin gave her "State of the State" address. One of the issues that is bound to come up again is whether eligibility Medicaid, the federally-funded health insurance program for low-income and disabled people, should be expanded. They need...
Posted by Michael Bates on February 4, 2014 7:58 AM
TV news is there as the employees of a McKeesport, PA, collision repair shop see the massively higher deductibles, premiums, and co-pays on their new healthcare plan, the result of the Affordable Care Act....
Posted by Michael Bates on January 31, 2014 9:32 AM
FreedomWorks is calling on Oklahomans to attend Sen. Tom Coburn's August townhall meetings to ask him to join conservative Senate Republicans in their fight to defund implementation of the Unaffordable Care Act. Here is a list of Coburn's August 2013 townhalls, which are mainly in rural eastern Oklahoma. Coburn won't...
Posted by Michael Bates on August 18, 2013 3:03 PM
On Monday in Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Oklahoma's free-market policy think-tank, hosted a forum on health care, highlighting the value of transparency and direct payment in medical pricing, and the accomplishments of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City in providing high-quality health care for...
Posted by Michael Bates on December 18, 2012 8:35 PM
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin announced today that Oklahoma will not create a state-based Obamacare exchange or participate in Obamacare's Medicaid expansion: For the past few months, my staff and I have worked with other lawmakers, Oklahoma stakeholders and health care experts across the country to determine the best course of...
Posted by Michael Bates on November 19, 2012 1:30 PM
With the judicial and political options for voiding Obamacare now apparently off the table, the final hope to defeat the DMV-ization of the best medical system on the planet may be the vast law's inherent contradictions. Hastily and sloppily put together, there are loopholes in the law that may be...
Posted by Michael Bates on November 16, 2012 12:21 AM
A group of 75 U. S. Senators and U. S. House members, led by Sen. Jim DeMint, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, and Rep. Jim Jordan, have written a letter to the National Governors Association urging against the implementation of state health care exchanges. Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn and Rep. James Lankford...
Posted by Michael Bates on July 2, 2012 7:06 PM
My inbox is filling with responses from Oklahoma officials and policy influencers to the ObamaCare ruling. From the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs: The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold the vast majority of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) reemphasizes the need for action at the ballot box and the...
Posted by Michael Bates on June 28, 2012 11:38 AM
I learn all sorts of interesting things at blogger conferences, and some of the most interesting are incidental to the official program. And sometimes you have to go a thousand miles away to learn about something in your own state. Back in April, I was at BlogConCLT, sponsored by FreedomWorks...
Posted by Michael Bates on June 21, 2012 11:32 PM
A Rally for Religious Freedom will be held in dozens of cities across the nation tomorrow, bringing together Catholics and Protestants to protest government intrusion in the religious convictions of health care providers. Tulsa's rally will take place at Chapman Centennial Green, on 6th Street downtown between Main and Boston,...
Posted by Michael Bates on June 7, 2012 3:40 PM
Americans will rally in 140 cities across the nation at noon tomorrow, Friday, March 23, 2012, to protest the Obamacare HHS mandate requiring nearly all private health insurance plans to cover "all FDA-approved prescription contraceptive drugs and devices, surgical sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs," overriding an employer's moral convictions. Tulsa's rally...
Posted by Michael Bates on March 22, 2012 12:53 PM
-->The Washington, D.C., based blog Alexa Shrugged weighs into the debate over the Obamacare mandate that would force church-owned institutions to fund insurance coverage for contraception, abortifacients, and abortion even if such funding violates the principles of the owners. Alexa has posted three installments in this series, marshaling facts,...
Posted by Michael Bates on February 20, 2012 8:59 PM
White Castle employees, whose insurance is almost fully paid by their employer: The Columbus-based family owned restaurant chain - known for serving small square hamburgers called "sliders" - says a single provision in the bill will eat up roughly 55 percent of its yearly net income after 2014. Starting that...
Posted by Michael Bates on July 5, 2010 10:21 PM
Tom Blumer, writing for Pajamas Media, points to statistics connecting Oklahoma's relatively good unemployment situation to implementation of HB 1804, the strict immigration enforcement bill approved in May 2007 Given the economic damage inflicted on us by the current administration and many state governments, most readers of this column would...
Posted by Michael Bates on May 16, 2010 10:20 AM
Sen. Tom Coburn, at a news conference today of physician members of the House and Senate regarding Obamacare: I want to send a couple of messages to my colleagues in the House. If you voted no and you vote yes, and you lose your election, and you think any nomination...
Posted by Michael Bates on March 18, 2010 12:51 PM
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