Hundreds of health care workers, nursing home residents and other Medicaid recipients are rallying at the state Capitol in support of a plan to draw down hundreds of millions of federal dollars offered to states for Medicaid expansion.
About 300 people rallied Tuesday on the south steps of the Capitol and then flooded into the building to ask their legislators to back a proposal for a $1.50-per-pack tax increase on cigarettes to pay for the "Medicaid Rebalancing Act of 2020."
Oklahoma's Republican leaders have repeatedly rejected a traditional Medicaid expansion offered to the states under the federal Affordable Care Act. But the Oklahoma plan would cover some uninsured by shifting tens of thousands of currently Medicaid-eligible pregnant women and children onto private health coverage through the federal exchange.