Health care

Purpose 

Create a dialogue between businesses and the health care provider community in an effort to promote policies directed at reducing the cost of health care to Oklahoma businesses.   

2019 Legislative Initiatives

•  Support a tax increase on cigarettes for the purpose of improving the health of Oklahomans and raising revenue to fund health care priorities such as: (1) assuring that all Medicaid providers are fully compensated for their services, (2) adequate funding for mental health and (3) providing coverage to uninsured Oklahomans

• Improve the Insure Oklahoma! premium assistance program designed to make health insurance more affordable for small businesses while assuring the program’s long-term stability and the funding source remains dedicated to Insure Oklahoma!

• Support incentives and initiatives designed to enhance medical research, improve service delivery and increase access to health care

• Maintain opposition to new state and federal mandated private health insurance benefits that would raise costs to businesses attempting to provide quality health insurance benefits until such time as an independent cost/benefit analysis accompanies and justifies any proposed health insurance benefit mandate

• Support the development of a healthy and productive workforce by eliminating barriers to the efforts of employers and communities in their promotion of positive health habits

• Support efforts to develop a state-based plan maximizing state and federal funds to broaden health insurance coverage to Oklahoma's uninsured residents and reduce the costs of uncompensated care that are currently shifted to employers and health care providers

• Support evidence-based solutions that simultaneously achieve better health, better health care, and cost containment

• Continue to support a long-term solution to address full reimbursement funding for Medicaid services since erosion of funding shifts cost increases to businesses and other taxpayers

• Support the protection of Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust funds as originally approved by the voters

• Protect funding sources and develop and support incentives and initiatives to enhance and increase the number of physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals

• Support initiatives that provide resources for employers for workplace training and screening programs in behavioral health in an effort to reduce Oklahoma’s ranking as one of the worst in mental health and substance abuse disorders in the United States

• Support full funding of mental health and substance abuse services to encourage and strengthen the stability of Oklahomans

• Support legislation that increases the number of immunized Oklahomans and oppose legislation that could decrease the number of immunized Oklahomans

• Support efforts, including training and funding, to create, increase and protect access to health care services to rural and underserved areas 

• Oppose efforts to restrict the continued development of the state’s bioscience and research programs

• Support physician training funding for the state’s medical schools in the base budgets of the University Hospitals Authority and Oklahoma State University Medical Authority 
   

Issue Brief: Health Care (2017)