During Wednesday's congressional forum in Tulsa, OK, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) discussed potential cuts to Medicaid and state funding in Oklahoma.
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00:00Can you talk a little bit about the fact that we are one of three states that has Medicaid
00:06enshrined in our constitution and maybe how Oklahomans are feeling right now or hospitals
00:15are feeling or providers about the potential of two cuts and what that's going to do to
00:20our state budget?
00:21Yeah, there's a lot of conversation about what would it mean on cuts in Medicaid.
00:27There's a couple things with this.
00:29One is our state does what a lot of states do.
00:32We have what we call a provider tax, okay, so don't gloss out on me, okay, give me just
00:37a second.
00:38I'll go faster.
00:39The state literally taxes long-term care facilities, hospitals, others, and say, you pay X amount,
00:46we'll put that into our state portion, and then we'll get more federal funds down, we'll
00:50get more federal funds down, and that'll come back to your hospital line.
00:53So the hospital typically breaks even or goes into black by what they donate in on the provider,
00:58tax, to what actually comes back to them.
01:01Can you view in hospital care?
01:03You can clarify this if you want to make it – I'll give you – make equal time to
01:07be able to answer that.
01:08Some states do more than others.
01:10Ours is 4 percent for our providers.
01:13Some states have as high as 6 percent.
01:15What that does is that pulls down more federal funds.
01:17Everybody is – everybody knows this game has happened for years.
01:20It was designed to say the state has a certain portion they put in, the federal government
01:24has a certain portion they put in.
01:25The states are going to providers and saying if we're going to get more Medicaid funds,
01:29we've got to kick in more.
01:30At some point, we've got to figure out how to be able to cap that, control that, manage
01:34that in some ways.
01:35And that's part of the debate.
01:38It's really going to push on some states like – I'm going to say in California and
01:42New York and Illinois, who have numbers like 6 percent provider taxes that are very, very
01:47high for those to be able to help push back to try to figure out how do we actually ask
01:52the state to do what the state said they agreed to do instead of them passing on an additional
01:56tax fund.
01:57Now, I told you not to gloss over on it, but that's one of the areas of Medicaid we're
02:01talking about and trying to be able to figure out what's the right number and the right
02:04percentage.
02:05We're all keenly aware, especially at rural hospitals.
02:08I've been home – this is now my – this is my third week this year to be back in Oklahoma.
02:14And, man, it's really nice to be back in Oklahoma because we've been in D.C. a lot.
02:18We've been moving a lot of things very rapidly there.
02:21But I spend a lot of time with rural hospitals as well while I've been home because they
02:25are the most vulnerable in the system and to be able to make sure that the system actually
02:30works for them.
02:31First thing side note on this, the rural hospitals I've spoken to, all of them have said Medicaid
02:36is now their best payer.
02:39Better than Medicare, better than commercial insurance, their best payer is Medicaid.
02:45That's a huge shift that's just occurred in the last few years in the way our state
02:50does the payments and what's actually happening on the federal side as well.
02:53And I've literally heard that from every single rural hospital that I'm talking to.
02:57So grateful that that part of the system is actually working better than it has in the past.
03:02So I hope that that's not fair.
03:04I hope you kind of hope that you're here.
03:05Thank you all.
03:06Thank you, guys.