This is part two of our maximum current communication with Gov. Stitt. He shares his thoughts on Medicaid growth and the investigations into the state’s biggest digital charter school.
Dick Pryor: This is Capitol Insider, your weekly appearance inside Oklahoma politics and coverage. I’m Dick Pryor with capital information director Shawn Ashley, and this is part of our interview with Gov. Kevin Stitt. Governor, it is excellent to have you with us.
Gov. Stitt, Thank you so much.
Pryor, You came to office as a political newcomer, an interloper. What’s been your biggest marvel to date?
Stitt, You understand a pair of things: I’m simply having a blast, and I think… I tell Oklahomans it’s an honor to be the governor, and you are now not. You’re no longer positive about exactly what to expect. However, I’m taking part in the process. It suits my skill set manner higher than campaigning, all right? If you can get through the campaign, it becomes a variety of a laugh. It’s no more distinctive than necessarily going for walks in an enterprise regarding the humans a part of it. So, I do not suppose loads administrations are truly conscious of the control of national authorities. They are all focused on policy and what legal guidelines must be modified. Still, I inform people the real work is getting within the groups and coping with the oldsters, placing the approaches, and the area’s processes. We’re moving the needle nationwide authorities to supply better services for our residents… Education and health care, and infrastructure, and the entirety.
Shawn Ashley Health care is one of those problems lawmakers seek to solve with a new running institution that part of your workforce can be concerned about. What do you see as the important thing elements of an Oklahoma plan to address fitness care?
Stitt, We’ll roll out my health care plan to Oklahomans before the next session, but it is about… It’s the front porch provider. It’s redesigning how we’ve got a spoke and…The device of how we supply health care offerings, how we take gain of federal assets. So we’re running with the Trump administration to find out what other matters we can do in Oklahoma to serve our populace higher. I tell my group all the time, which might be which are my policy oldsters. There may be forty-nine other examples to study, and I need you to take the ones to the top 10 states; I want you to discern how our health affects what we need to do to fit as much as supply better offerings. And so that is the type of top degree we are searching for, and I’ll share that with Oklahomans later this fall as I ideal the real plan.
Pryor: Will Medicaid enlargement be part of that?
Stitt, You realize, at this factor, no. As it sits without a few forms of waiver, Medicaid enlargement isn’t the proper aspect for Oklahoma. Medicaid growth is talking about a set of non-disabled, running adults, so I suppose there is a higher manner to attend to them and incentivize them. So I recognize the argument, and I need every federal dollar I can get in my country, whether it is roads and bridges or health care; however, I am not...I’m further protecting what it costs the taxpayers. And is it desirable long term to put position-bodied, working adults on a machine that does not incentivize them to preserve running and striving and transfer ahead? So it is then that’s the rub, but I’ll keep sharing with Oklahomans as I roll this out within the fall.
