We need your help! Over 40,000 Oklahoma parents could lose their health care if a bill set to be voted on Monday in the Senate should pass. That’s a number equal to the number of undergraduate students at OU and OSU combined. Two in three of those who would lose coverage are mothers.
Oklahoma already has one of the strictest standards for Medicaid enrollment in the country. A single parent with one child taking home $625 dollars per month makes too much to be eligible. SB 1030 would cut that threshold even lower. The monthly income limit for a single mother with one child would be just $275 per month. This new cutoff would be lower than every state in the U.S. except Texas and Alabama.
Cutting parents off SoonerCare will increase Oklahoma’s already high uninsured rate and put even greater strains on our already-underfunded safety net health centers and hospital emergency rooms. People with disabilities, mental illness, and substance use disorders will lose coverage as a result of this bill. This will leave them with nowhere to go for the care they need and make it even harder for them to maintain the health they need to be productively employed . For more information on SB 1030 and other attacks on the health care safety net, click here.
The vote on this bill is scheduled for this Monday, March 12th in the Senate. Please call your State Senator and tell them that kicking more than 40,000 people off of their health care is not the way to fix our budget. You can find your legislators here. Please call your State Senator and ask them to vote NO on SB 1030.
