Oklahoma will not accept a $54.6 million federal grant for setting up a system where Oklahomans could shop for health insurance, Gov. Mary Fallin said today.
Fallin said the state instead will use state and private money to form the system. She had no estimate of how much it would cost, but House Speaker Kris Steele said today that he believes a system can be developed for an amount less than the federal grant.
The state is facing a $500 million shortfall in the upcoming fiscal year. Steele said legislative budget leaders and the governor's office will have to determine where the state will get the money to pay for developing the exchange.
The Republican governor and Steele, R-Shawnee, had supported using the money from Democratic President Barack Obama's administration to pay for the effort, upsetting many Republicans and conservatives in the state who had gone to the polls months earlier to vote for opting out of the federal health care law.
Senate President Pro Tem Brian Bingman, R-Sapulpa, originally agreed to accepting the federal money, but he came out against the idea two weeks ago.
He said he was worried the grant could lead to federal control of Oklahoma's online insurance informational system, which the federal government calls a health insurance exchange.
Fallin said the rejection of the federal grant should make it clear that Oklahoma is not accepting the federal health care law. The state has filed a lawsuit challenging the federal law's constitutionality, and Fallin voted against it last year while a member of Congress.
Oklahoma hasn't received any of the grant money, she said.
Legislation is being drafted that would form a board to oversee the establishment of Oklahoma's health care exchange. It's hoped the measure can be passed this session, which ends late next month. States must have their plans in place by the end of 2013.
“We believe that we can develop a better solution,” said Fallin, who was flanked by Steele, Bingman and several GOP state senators during today's Capitol news conference.
The federal health care law requires states to submit plans for their own health insurance exchanges if the state doesn't want to use a federal system.
Oklahoma was one of several states awarded a grant to help set up their exchanges. Former Gov. Brad Henry, a Democrat, applied for the grant late last year.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives by the narrowest of margins approved Steele's health exchange bill in March, but the measure was never taken up in the Senate.
Sen. Bill Brown, R-Broken Arrow, chairman of the Senate Insurance and Retirement Committee, said he reviewed the federal grant and found that accepting it would put Oklahoma at risk of having the federal government eventually run its health care exchange. He told Bingman, and Bingman decided the bill wouldn't be heard in the Senate.
