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Sunday, January 31, 2021

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s Disastrous Efforts to Privatize Everything | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s Disastrous Efforts to Privatize Everything | Diane Ravitch's blog
John Thompson: Oklahoma’s Disastrous Efforts to Privatize Everything




John Thompson is a historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma. He keeps us abreast of what is happening in his home state.

He writes:

Now that Oklahoma voters rejected Gov. Kevin Stitt’s recommendations and chose to accept hundreds of millions of dollars a year of Medicaid Expansion funds, policy-makers must ask what could go wrong with Stitt’s current effort to privatize up to $2 billion in Oklahoma Medicaid services. Nondoc reports that this week:

Amid an air of confusion over its own powers and responsibilities, the Oklahoma Health Care Authority Board voted this morning to authorize financial expenditures for contracting with managed care organizations, controversial entities that take a portion of public Medicaid funding for attempting to improve care coordination, increase patient compliance and decrease overall program costs.

Several of the “five major health care associations” that opposed Stitt’s plan “referenced Oklahoma’s past managed Medicaid effort from the 1990s, which was CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: Oklahoma’s Disastrous Efforts to Privatize Everything | Diane Ravitch's blog