Lawmakers Gather Input on Reducing Number of Uninsured Oklahomans
The Journal Record

OKLAHOMA CITY - Don't get caught up in the numbers game when it comes to decreasing the ranks of the uninsured, Kathleen Stoll, director of health policy for Washington, D.C.-based Families USA, told Oklahoma lawmakers Tuesday. Focusing solely on reducing the number of uninsured Oklahomans as an end unto itself may inadvertently exacerbate one of the major problems driving up insurance premiums - cost shifting.

On the other hand, Tom Daxon of the Oklahoma City-based Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs said encouraging individuals to pay for more of their own health care, while allowing insurance companies to make a profit, is the best way to address Oklahoma's high rate of uninsured people.

Oklahoma families that buy health insurance pay an extra $1,781 per year in premiums to cover the cost of providing care to the uninsured - the third-highest level of cost shift in the country, behind West Virginia and New Mexico, said Stoll. That added cost makes it even more difficult for struggling families to afford health coverage, thereby threatening to increase the level of the uninsured in Oklahoma. But being able to say more people have health insurance does not fix the problem. Read MORE!

(OCPA was invited to the health care meeting to educate members of the legislature on the Oklahoma Comprehensive Health Indepedence Plan.)

In a new article, state Rep. Jason Murphey (R-Guthrie) suggests that "one size fits all" doesn't work in education, especially for children with special needs.

He suggests empowering parents of autistic children with more school choices. OCPA made this very suggestion in an article earlier this year.

Patriotic Taxation?

By Brett Magbee

There's been a lot of discussion lately about patriotism after a candidate for national office claimed that raising taxes on the rich is the "patriotic" thing to do. I wonder why more citizens weren't outraged. I guess it's easy for many middle income citizens to embrace such pronouncements, after all, they figure, "yeah, let the rich guy pick up the tab." Well the reality is they already do! According to the Internal Revenue Service, the top 10% of wage earners pay about 70% of all federal income taxes. The top 5 percent pay 60 percent of all taxes. The Wall Street Journal recently noted that "the top 1% of taxpayers pay twice as large a share of income taxes (39%) at a 35% rate than they did in 1980, when they were taxed at a rate of 70% yet paid only 19% of income taxes. In that sense," the WSJ notes, "the tax code is more 'progressive' now."

The very idea that paying higher taxes is patriotic is problematic. Seems someone should have explained the patriotic nature of taxes to the participants of the Boston Tea Party. Remember these were the colonists who became outraged over what today would be a minuscule tax on imported tea. But perhaps there are other patriotic ways to think about tax money . . .     

Senator Tom Coburn might say that cutting congressional pork is patriotic. The less it costs our government to operate the less tax monies are needed. That would coincide with the ideas of Calvin Coolidge, who once noted, "Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery."  Read MORE!