Letters to the Editor
Russell W. Jones
The letter from D.W. Tiffee (“Medicaid expansion vital,” Aug. 1, Oklahoma Gazette) uses some pretty shaky arguments and assumptions to make his point that Medicaid should be expanded.

Commentary
Jonathan Small
Remember State Question 744? It required the state to raise its annual per pupil expenditures to at least the average rate of surrounding states. The measure did not raise taxes or designate funding. It was estimated that, if passed, SQ 744 would have increased state spending on common education by $830 million.

Commentary
Kate Richey

For nearly 50 years, Medicaid has provided basic medical care to the poorest and most vulnerable Oklahomans. While Medicaid is the state’s primary safety net health care provider, many of the state’s poor are not currently eligible. The vast majority (93 percent) of those covered now under SoonerCare/Medicaid are children, seniors, disabled adults and pregnant women.

Commentary
Brandon Dutcher
“Media skepticism is selective,” the author and essayist Joseph Sobran once observed. “Lyndon Johnson didn’t meet the ‘adversary press’ when he was pushing the (progressive) Great Society programs: He ran into it when he pursued the (reactionary) war in Vietnam.”

News
Clifton Adcock
As Oklahoma pushes forward to form its own health care reform plan, several groups are trying to pressure Gov. Mary Fallin to reverse her previous decision not to expand the state’s Medicaid program.

News
Rachel Curtis
Hundreds of thousands of middle- and lower-income Oklahomans this tax season will claim credits that the state Legislature considered eliminating only last year. With 17 percent of Oklahoma City’s residents living below the poverty level of $15,510 for a family of two, losing the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Sales Tax Relief Credit and Child Tax Credit would impact a significant portion of the metro’s most vulnerable families.