{"id":176367,"date":"2020-07-02T18:35:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-02T23:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/07\/02\/another-consequence-of-covid-19\/"},"modified":"2020-07-02T18:35:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T23:35:00","slug":"another-consequence-of-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/07\/02\/another-consequence-of-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Consequence of Covid-19"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>By a narrow margin, <a href=\"https:\/\/oklahoman.com\/article\/5665790\/oklahoma-voters-approve-medicaid-expansion-at-the-ballot\">Oklahoma voters have approved a change to the state constitution which institute Medicaid expansion<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;m pretty sure if we weren&#8217;t in the middle of a pandemic, ti would have gone the other way:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Oklahoma is poised to become the 37th state to expand Medicaid to cover more low-income residents after voters narrowly approved State Question 802 on Tuesday. <\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026 <\/p>\n<p>State Question 802 passed by 6,488 votes, making Oklahoma the fifth state expand Medicaid through a ballot initiative. <\/p>\n<p>The question will enshrine Medicaid expansion in Oklahoma\u2019s constitution \u2014 effectively preventing Oklahoma\u2019s GOP-controlled Legislature or Republican governor from limiting or undoing the expansion. <\/p>\n<p>After nearly a decade of waiting on politicians to act, Oklahomans decided on Tuesday to take health care into their own hands, Yes on 802 campaign manager Amber England said in a statement. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the middle of a pandemic, Oklahomans stepped up and delivered life-saving care for nearly 200,000 of our neighbors, took action to keep our rural hospitals open, and brought our tax dollars home to protect jobs and boost our local economy,&#8221; she said. <\/p>\n<p>The campaign for SQ 802 was launched after years of legislative inaction on Medicaid expansion. The Yes on 802 campaign <a href=\"https:\/\/oklahoman.com\/article\/5645061\/medicaid-expansion-campaign-turns-in-312000-signatures\">turned in a record number of signatures<\/a> to qualify the question for the ballot.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Good politics and good policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By a narrow margin, Oklahoma voters have approved a change to the state constitution which institute Medicaid expansion. I&#8217;m pretty sure if we weren&#8217;t in the middle of a pandemic, ti would have gone the other way: Oklahoma is poised to become the 37th state to expand Medicaid to cover more low-income residents after voters &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[375,374,460],"class_list":["post-176367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-elections","tag-politics","tag-public-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176367"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}