To Comfort The Afflicted
And Afflict The Comfortable

To Comfort The Afflicted And Afflict The Comfortable

Friday, October 4, 2024

Observercast

Just Not Going To Do It And You Can’t Make Me!

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That’s the message many, many House and Senate members of the Oklahoma Legislature are telling Gov. “My Way or I’ll Pout” Kevin Stitt about their lack of interest in coming back to Oklahoma City for a special session, at least if it would try to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision knocking down his plan to convert Medicaid expansion to Mangled Care … sorry, Managed Care.

The regular session ended in late May and our legislators went home and got an earful from hospital administrators, doctors, dentists, nurses and just about everybody else, including Medicaid recipients, expressing their concern and adamant opposition to Stitt’s Scheme which would pay four huge insurance companies over $2 billion to replace what is already one of the best health delivery and insurance systems in the nation. Administrative overhead currently is approximately 5%; in our governor’s monkey business with insurance moguls, it goes to at least 20%, if not more.

Additionally, one of the companies, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, actually refused to pay for health care for gravely ill kids at the OU Children’s Hospital within the OU Health Sciences Center in OKC to the point that, during the Christmas holidays, several had to be transferred to other hospitals both in Oklahoma and surrounding states.

My source on this horrible behavior by The Blues is former OU regent Gary Pierson, not a man who is known to exaggerate or make up stories and why would he? It easiest enough to check on the validity of such a claim and no one has disputed it yet in my research.

As Joe Biden would say, “Look!” The insurance companies bottom lines are the bottom lines. Their executives, who are paid in the millions annually [$23 million in the case of BC/BS] don’t work for us. They work for the stockholders, while our state-run organization, known as the Oklahoma Health Care Authority [OHCA], is an arm of the executive branch, is accountable to its board made up only of Oklahomans, holds its meetings within our state, and the sessions are open to the public.

Oh, and one other related thing of tremendous importance: The United States Supreme Court, on a 7-2 vote, just upheld – again – the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act [ACA] or as Republicans like to call it ObamaCare.

And another reminder: Every damn one of our Republican congressmen and senators, need I give you their names again, have opposed ObamaCare from its inception in 2010 to this very day. After this final court ruling, let’s see if they remain adamant in their positions of no, never, nada; or perhaps they have finally seen which way the wind is blowing, even here in redneck Oklahoma.

What a wonderful question when our seven elephants come home and hold town halls … presuming they do come home and be available to those of us who pay their salaries.

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Cal Hobson
Cal Hobson
Cal Hobson, a Lexington Democrat, served in the Oklahoma Legislature from 1978-2006, including one term as Senate President Pro Tempore.