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John Silva of Morton Comprehensive: His Health Clinics Can No Longer Accept New Uninsured Patients

Morton Health Care
Aired on Monday, January 19th.

At the end of 2014, a surprising announcement appeared in the Tulsa World. A subsequent news item expanding on this announcement had the following headline: "Morton Clinics Won't Accept New Uninsured Patients, Citing State Cuts to Funding." Morton Comprehensive Health Services -- with clinics in Tulsa, Nowata, and Bartlesville -- is one of Northeastern Oklahoma's leading providers of health care for uninsured patients. But now, due to state budget cuts to funding for care of the uninsured, Morton will no longer treat new patients from this unfortunate population. Our guest on ST is John Silva, CEO of Morton Comprehensive Health Services, who made this announcement in our local daily newspaper on a Sunday in late December. As Silva explains on our program, it really comes down to two issues -- the aforesaid cuts in state funding as well as Oklahoma's anti-Affordable Care Act decision to opt out of Medicaid expansion. (Silva estimates, by the way, that 70 percent of Morton's uninsured patients would be covered under expanded Medicaid in Oklahoma.)

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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