It’s become clear that Oklahoma’s U.S. Sen. James Lankford has apparently taken one too many sips of the spiked, D.C.-flavored Kool-Aid.

He’s either become so addicted to the ambrosia served by the Washington elites, or he’s been spending too much time cocooned in our nation’s capital to be in touch with what’s happening at home.

Because it’s clear there’s a disconnect between the Republican Medicaid propaganda he’s been spouting and the stark reality of Oklahoma’s insurance and health care systems.

Earlier this month, Lankford conducted a CNBC interview where he decided to bring up congressional Republicans’ planned changes to Medicaid that, as he put it, “everyone is going crazy over.”

Lankford was referring to the U.S. House of Representatives’ budget bill that institutes complex work reporting requirements for lower-income individuals who received health insurance coverage as part of our state’s expansion of Medicaid coverage. Oklahomans voted in 2020 to expand access to the insurance program, which relies on federal-state matching dollars, to provide health care coverage to Oklahomans ages 19 to 64 who made less than $17,800 a year as an individual, or families of four who make less than $36,600 a year.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this new work requirement would affect 18.5 million adults nationally.

The measure also allows states to implement more stringent work requirements and verification checks and disenroll people who don’t comply.

Lankford, who makes an annual salary of $174,000 and receives access to a nice package of federal health benefits, of course, couldn’t resist showing how tone deaf he is to the Oklahomans back home who are struggling to make ends meet or can’t afford health insurance.

He told CNBC that it’s “just a work requirement.”

“People are screaming and saying, ‘Hey it’s kicking people off Medicaid.’ It’s not kicking people off Medicaid, it’s transitioning from Medicaid to employer provided health care,” Lankford said. “So yes, we’ve got 10 million people that are not going to be on Medicaid, but then they are going to be on employer provided health care. We think that’s a better option for the taxpayer, and quite frankly, for their families as well.”

Lankford conveniently forgot to mention that slightly less than half of Oklahoma private sector businesses offered health insurance to their employees in 2023, according to an analysis by KFF, which provides nonpartisan health policy research. The 2023 number, the most recent available, does not factor in government-provided insurance or unincorporated private businesses whose owners report their income as part of their personal taxes.

But that still leaves half of Oklahoma employers that don’t offer that insurance.

So where does Lankford expect those people to get their employer-provided insurance? Surely, he’s not suggesting that employees flee their current jobs and hold out for jobs that provide it.

A party that champions limited government isn’t planning to force private employers to begin offering it or to boost salaries to ensure increased uptake, is it? Is he offering to share his federal health package with the masses?

After long resisting calls to expand Medicaid, our state found itself with some of the worst health outcomes in the nation, thanks in part to hundreds of thousands of Oklahomans who made too much to qualify for Medicaid, but too little to afford private insurance.

Voters’ decision to expand Medicaid to include our working poor was a move to change our health care outcomes ranking for the better.

A little more than a year after expanding Medicaid access, over 280,000 Oklahomans had signed up.

Prior to Medicaid expansion, Oklahoma’s uninsured rate reached about 14.4%. That rate dropped to 11.4% in 2023. Still, Oklahoma ranked 48th in its number of insured. Massachusetts, which has the lowest rate, had just 2.6% of residents uninsured.

Out of 77 Oklahoma counties, 75 are classified as health professional shortage areas. Those are areas where there are at least 3,500 patients for every provider. Our state ranks 48th for physician supply, 46th for primary care physician access, and 47th for general surgeons, according to the Cicero Institute, a nonpartisan public policy institute.

So I’m not 100% sure why Lankford would want Oklahoma’s uninsured rates to get even worse. Because they will worsen.

Adding work requirements probably will remove people from the federal Medicaid expansion roles, but at what cost to our state?

So, yeah, everyone “going crazy over” Congress’ proposed work requirements can read the writing on the wall.

Perhaps Congress should fix the underlying issues that are plaguing our health care system before promoting policies designed to increase our nation’s uninsured rates.

If we can fix the health care system, perhaps then we’ll all benefit from lower costs and maybe fewer people will need to utilize a government program.

Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

Buckle up: The bromance between Kevin Stitt and Ryan Walters is over.

And, boy, do these guys know how to cause a scene.

This pair has seemingly been bosom buddies since the governor plucked the former McAlester history teacher out of political obscurity in 2020 by naming him to his cabinet as Oklahoma’s secretary of education with a promise that Walters had the experience to move the “needle in educational outcomes.”

From the outside, they appeared to be in lock step for years as Stitt, at least tacitly, supported Walters’ stances on policy and propaganda as he spent taxpayer dollars to build his conservative cred.

But last week – seemingly out of nowhere – Stitt apparently decided he’s finally had enough of Walters’ shenanigans making a mockery of our public school system.

The fallout from Stitt’s sudden, shocking and glorious display of leadership was spectacular to behold.

First, Stitt threw Walters under the metaphorical (school) bus and backed over him a couple of times to get his attention. He called out Oklahoma students’ continued dismal national testing outcomes and months of unflattering – though unspecified – headlines. That’s a clear sign, Stitt said, that “our education infrastructure has fallen prey to needless political drama.”

In the same breath, Stitt canned three of his own appointees on the State Board of Education, which votes on Walters’ proposals in its duty to keep the superintendent from getting out of line.

After years of implied consent to Walters’ plans, it looks like what put Stitt over was compassion – plus a healthy fear of violating federal law. Walters’ immigration witch hunt against undocumented children and their parents was a step too far.

“Let’s go after the bad guys,” Stitt said. “Let’s go after people that are committing crimes, and let’s not terrorize and make our kids not show up at school.”

Walters – not one to stay quiet – made it clear from his unenviable spot under the bus that he believes Stitt is a terrible driver.

And in his clapback came the name Republicans love or fear: Donald Trump.

The superintendent accused Stitt of “joining the swampy political establishment that President Trump is fighting against.” He said the governor “fired” the three board members for “political purposes,” and that the move “undermines Oklahoma kids and parents and an America First agenda.”

He quickly created some ridiculous “Trump Advisory Committee” composed of two of the now-fired board members — Kendra Wesson and Katie Quebedeaux. Their booby prize is being tapped to lead “the charge to take back our schools from the Federal Department of Education” and as Quebedeaux explained, ensure every “Oklahoma child has a bright future and access to the quality education they deserve.”

The two have had their chance to give every child a quality education. And yet here we are. Bottom 10. Pardon me if I don’t want any more education “leadership” from them.

Not to belabor the point, but since Stitt didn’t get specific on headlines, let me help you out. There have been so many.

There’s the religious crusade to spend $3 million to put Bibles in school classrooms. Then there was an attempt to bamboozle parents and educators into thinking students were doing better academically by quietly lowering the proficiency benchmarks and not telling anyone.

When we’re not grading our students on a curve, our outcomes are firmly Top 10 worst in the nation, exactly the opposite of what Stitt wants. His own State Board of Education appointees, meanwhile, continued to rubber stamp bizarre policies proposed by Walters and let him run amok.

And, if we’ve reached a point in Oklahoma where pressing for policies that ensure more children are literate in math and reading means we’re part of “the swampy political establishment,” I guess I’ll take my chances, don my waders and hang out in the snake-filled quagmire with Stitt and Bigfoot.

Maybe Walters will pull his head out of the bog and decide to join us.

Republicans hold supermajorities in our Legislature and openly embrace Trump’s “America First” agenda. I haven’t met a single Republican lawmaker that wants a generation of Oklahoma children to be illiterate.

Maybe they should get some clarity on how Trump can help with that.

Stitt, meanwhile, terms out in two years, so I suspect he’s looking toward what he’ll be remembered for.

Both his and Walters’ legacies are linked because while Walters is elected to helm our schools, Stitt appoints the board that’s supposed to make sure we’re not crashing into the rocky shores.

We’ve officially shipwrecked, and we desperately need someone to rescue us and serve as a guiding light.

Right now one of Stitt’s legacies is years of poor academic outcomes and an inability to land big business deals, likely in large part because of our education system.

And while Walters inherited this mess when he was first elected in 2022, he’s had two years to right the ship. His current strategy is not moving the needle in the right direction.

We’ve yet to see if Stitt’s new appointees will continue to rubber stamp Walters’ plans or if they’ll take a critical eye and shoot down bad ideas.

But the good news is if this new board refuses to do what’s necessary to right the ship, it looks like our governor now has the spine to fire them and find someone who will.

Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

Irate parents taught an Oklahoma lawmaker a life lesson I bet he’ll never forget: Do not mess with the education of public school children who have been diagnosed with a disability.

Republican Dusty Deevers emerged last week from the dustup with parents, educators and therapists with a metaphorical black eye, reminding him that Oklahomans don’t like schoolyard bullies.

In case you missed all the hubbub, somehow Deevers got the idiotic idea that too many Oklahoma children are receiving special education services through the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. That’s the federal law that protects children’s right to a “free appropriate public education” and guarantees that they have access to special education and early intervention services.

He pointed to estimates indicating that as many as 1 in 6 Oklahoma school children are currently on Individualized Education Programs, better known as an IEP, which provides them access to services such as speech, language, physical, occupational and behavioral therapies to help them succeed in school.

Generally, legislators have tacitly acknowledged that these programs help students succeed academically even though state and federal leaders have long provided only a fraction of the funding necessary to operate them at their maximum potential.

But rather than urging his colleagues to ramp up funding and bolster support for those children, the lawmaker from Elgin hatched a harebrained plan to reduce participation numbers by removing eligibility for in-school services. The proposed law would have required parents to seek services on their own dime after school hours. If parents couldn’t afford it or find qualified therapists, too bad, so sad.

The plan also would have prohibited Medicaid from helping to pay for those in-school services as well as covering the costs of sight screenings.

At first the proposal flew under the radar, obscured among nearly 3,100 bills filed for consideration for the 2025 legislative session, but then the ramifications of Deevers’ plan began to dawn on folks and outrage exploded on social media.

Deevers swiftly discovered that there might be one thing almost as scary as incurring the wrath of God — Oklahomans furious that legislators are impeding on their “parental rights.” (You know, that popular buzzword that Republicans like to bandy about.)

Deevers tried to clean up the mess by promising to amend the bill because he said it wasn’t doing what he intended. However, he dumped gasoline on the raging Dumpster fire thanks to a lengthy post on X that revealed that he believes we might have “far over-diagnosed students;” that he wants to audit IEP spending; protect “parental rights;” force schools to stop providing students on IEPs “hormonal birth control;” and exclude “non-educationally necessary services.”

That unleashed a second torrent of anger because any parent who has a child on an IEP knows that schools are not willy-nilly thinking up ways to place children into services they don’t need. And that anybody who has set foot in a school knows how rare it is to hear parents complain that a school is doing too much and overperforming.

It’s much more common to hear they’re not doing enough.

They know that to get a child evaluated for a disability takes a considerable amount of advocacy work from adults in a child’s life, numerous meetings with the school, months of evaluations and tons of paperwork.

Based on the complexities of even qualifying for an IEP, I’d say probably more students need specialized services than are receiving them. Our numbers should probably be much higher.

They also know that parents have an enormous amount of rights when it comes to how children with disabilities are educated. Schools don’t randomly place children on IEPs without parental involvement. Parents have to agree to the placement and can also choose to end those services at any time. Parents get to set the parameters of how often they meet with school leaders and determine how often their child receives services. They can demand a meeting at any time to discuss perceived problems.

And anybody with an iota of sense knows that IEPs are not prescription pads that allow educators to dole out medication or birth control. Medical doctors prescribe that, not speech therapists. In fact, it’s such a farfetched idea, I’ve never heard of that being a concern in Oklahoma. Schools are required to operate within the confines of the IEPs, which parents must sign off on.

But who are we to allow facts to stop some good old fashioned fear mongering?

To Deevers’ credit, he appears to have taken parental feedback seriously. Last week, he announced plans to withdraw the bill and vowed that it wouldn’t be considered in the Legislature.

I hope that more lawmakers will take note, because we often see an unwillingness to take public feedback seriously and plenty of excuses why it should be ignored. A common excuse is they’re only interested in feedback from their constituents.

It’s time for that foolhardy mindset to stop, and the voices of Oklahomans to be taken seriously. People affected by legislation don’t necessarily live within a specific lawmaker’s legislative boundaries, but their tax dollars are keeping the lights on in every office.

I’m glad their message came through loud and clear: Picking on 116,000 children that have diagnosed disabilities is just wrong. And their Legislature shouldn’t be weaponized against them.

Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

As if we don’t already have enough laws on our books, Oklahoma legislators have decided we need at least 3,100 more.

Yes, our state representatives filed about 1,960 proposed laws and resolutions, while our state senators filed about 1,140 of them.

But have no fear, only a fraction of these bills will likely become law because December and January of each year is the legislative period that I unaffectionately call “political silly season.”

Political silly season, mercifully, is a short but brutal period when legislators unveil all sorts of cockamamie ideas aimed at further stripping Oklahomans of their freedoms or attempting to insert governmental “assistance” in areas that we’re doing perfectly well without it.

Each year, without fail, Oklahomans are unlucky enough to bear witness to a parade of bills that would be hilariously funny if it were April Fools Day. Sadly, it’s not a joke when state lawmakers are wasting taxpayer resources filing ludicrous proposals they actually believe in or – more likely – hope will score them cheap political points.

For instance, please raise your hand if you’re participating in robotic cockfighting.

Anyone?

House Bill 1326, filed by a Republican, seeks to legalize fighting real roosters against robotic ones as long as the live cock doesn’t get hurt.

Uhm. I’ve never been to a cockfight, but isn’t incapacitating a rival rooster the whole point? Isn’t that why the sport is viewed as so barbaric it’s classified as a felony in our state? I guess I know which bird my money will always be on.

Then there’s a Republican measure proposing that we rename the Department of Corrections the Department of Corruption.

I could see changing the name to the Department of Punishment because traditionally legislators have favored policies that lock people up for inordinate amounts of time with little interest in rehabilitating them, leading to some of the highest incarceration rates in the nation.

But if the Department of Corruption gains traction, I can only imagine how conversations would go behind the walls of our prisons.

“I’m with the Department of Corruption, and I’m here to shake you down, twerp. Hand me all your commissary funds.”

Speaking of convicted felons, we have another Republican lawmaker who has filed legislation seeking to protect President Donald Trump’s so-called “constitutional right” to vote in Oklahoma. According to a press release from the legislator, the point of the bill is to “send a clear message that every American, and especially the president of the United States, is afforded their full rights and protections in Oklahoma, regardless of political attacks elsewhere.”

For starters, Trump doesn’t have a “constitutional right” to vote in Oklahoma because he doesn’t live here. Like everywhere else in this country, we only allow residents to vote in our elections.

When Trump’s latest stint in the White House is up in four years, I don’t see him suddenly trading his cushy, oceanfront digs in Florida and moving himself and Melania to landlocked Oklahoma.

Then there are the two useless Republican bills that seem aimed at harming the homeless.

The first makes it a misdemeanor crime, punishable by up to a year in jail, to remove a shopping cart from a retail store. It’s already a crime to steal any item from businesses, so why do we need to carve out shopping carts?

A second bill allows municipalities to expend funds on one-way bus tickets to destinations out of state for their homeless. The bill does not require unhoused residents to agree to the removal, which raises some serious constitutional questions.

If that becomes law, I’m certain our neighboring states will adopt similar legislation that allows them to send their homeless to Oklahoma.

And don’t get me started on the proposed “Covenant Marriage Act.” It proposes offering couples a $2,500 tax credit if they agree to be married forever. The only way to escape that would be if your spouse commits one of the terrible three “As” — abuse, adultery or abandonment.

And while we’re on the topic of trapping people in loveless marriages, that same Republican lawmaker wants to ban no-fault divorce. That means “incompatibility” would no longer be grounds to end a marriage. Legitimate grounds for divorce would include “insanity for a period of five years” that requires being institutionalized and a “poor prognosis for recovery.” It also would remove incarceration as grounds for divorce.

Political silly season should drive Oklahomans insane. Can we get a bill that grants Oklahomans a divorce from dumb legislative ideas?

The good news is ridiculous legislation typically meets an early demise each year during the annual legislative session.

But bills like these are bad for a state that’s trying to convince people and businesses that we live in the 21st century, and that we have state leaders that share that mindset.

So here’s hoping that next year a miracle occurs and that every piece is focused on raising our lagging outcomes.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.