Dear Oklahoma R3publicans and OKgrassroots,
Please take action to promote truly free enterprise in the state of Oklahoma. We don’t want government run or mandated health care by the feds or the states now, do we?
What is it about limited and less government that seems so difficult to understand by those we elect. We don’t want them implementing solutions, we want them to keep us free to do so ourselves as we want to do so.
We want to take care of ourselves and our families and our friends with Godly wisdom and charitable hearts in our own neighborhoods.
Please tell them to help us by keeping us free to do so.
Please support OK-SAFE especially if you live in Oklahoma!
Here is a recent letter from Amanda Teegarden on behalf of OK-SAFE to some of our Oklahoma Senators (sample below and below that a recent newsletter).
Share with friends and email or call your Senator on this topic asap.
Our elected officials need our input! Thank you~
For Life and Liberty,
Sandra Crosnoe
Finding Gems and Sharing them
R3publicans
OKgrassroots
Constitutional Liberty Coalition
Sample Letter to Senators
From: Amanda Teegarden
Date: April 5, 2011 6:01:09 PM CDT
To: Elbert L. Brown, Cliff Aldridge
Cc: Patrick Anderson, Randy Bass, Josh Brecheen, Brian Crain, Mike Mazzei, Andrew Rice, John Sparks, Gary Stanislawski, Jim Wilson
Subject: Fw: OK-SAFE – Cato’s Michael F. Cannon Interview; OK Senate Stalls “ObamaCare” Enabler – sort of
Dear Senate Retirement and Insurance Committee Members,
[RE: HB 2130 language, and possible amendatory language in HB 1996]
I am respectfully asking each of you to please listen to the interview noted below of Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, on the subject of health insurance exchanges, federal grant money to develop them, and why states should not establish an exchange. Bottom line is that the exchanges are not free market and do not work.
I am grateful that the Senate has stalled HB 2130; it is understood that there may be pressure to go ahead with similar language attached to another bill, or to submit a committee substitute to establish what is characterized as an “Oklahoma exchange”.
It is perhaps past time to recognize the fact that, despite the reputation and credibility of a certain well-thought-of conservative foundation advocating for exchanges, insurance exchanges do not work. Not one already-established exchange has fulfilled the advertised expectations, unless those expectations included failure as an outcome.
I am asking for a NO vote on any such efforts to build/establish an Oklahoma insurance exchange, with or without federal grant money, regardless of which bill the language may be attached to, and regardless of whom the author may be.
Respectfully yours,
Amanda Teegarden
Executive Director
OK-SAFE, Inc.
Recent OK-SAFE Newsletter
On Mon, 4/4/11, OK-SAFE, Inc. wrote:
From: OK-SAFE, Inc.
Subject: OK-SAFE – Cato’s Michael F. Cannon Interview; OK Senate Stalls “ObamaCare” Enabler – sort of
Date: Monday, April 4, 2011, 10:04 PM
For recent OK-SAFE newsletter April 4, 2011 in its entirety – Please click here
Some excerpts below:
Listen to America in the Balance on Truth in Focus Internet radio.
4/3/11 – Guest Michael F. Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, discusses why “Obamacare Can’t Be Fixed, and Now is the Time to Dismantle It”; federal grants for state-based health insurance exchanges; and why states should not institute insurance exchanges.
3/27/11 – Hosts Amanda and James discuss the 5 questions Gov. Fallin answered in a press release about the $54 M Early Innovator Grant; 2nd Half is a discussion of the recent Tulsa County Republican Convention and the two resolutions opposing HB 2130 and the exchanges.
3/20/11 – Guest researcher Vicky Davis discusses the reinvention of America’s health care system; the move toward exchanges; and managed competition.
2/27/11 – Interview with Mark Croucher, independent insurance agent in Oklahoma, discussing concerns with the Health Insurance Exchange and its’ link to “ObamaCare”.
[OK-SAFE recently had the opportunity to interview Michael F. Cannon on their America in the Balance radio program. The subjects included the definition of insurance exchanges, federal funding grants, and why states should not implement exchanges. Podcast of the 4/3/11 interview here]
Michael F. Cannon is the director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute. Previously, he served as a domestic policy analyst for the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee where he advised the Senate leadership on health, education, labor, welfare and the Second Amendment. He is the author of many articles and opinion pieces, including Obamacare Can’t Be Fixed, and Now Is the Time to Dismantle It (which appeared in the 3/21/11 issue of National Review), ObamaCare: a Federal Takeover, No Matter Who Runs the Exchanges (at Cato@Liberty Blog), and US Healthcare: What Hath Obama Wrought?
Some of the key points made during the interview were:
- Contrary to rumor, exchanges are not the “free market”
- Health Insurance Exchanges create new government bureaucracies, both state and federal
- The federal tax code is the problem and state bureaucracies cannot fix the federal tax code
- Once created, these bureaucracies grow and become a constituency – a constituency that lobbies for more power, owing their paychecks and power to more government.
- Grants follow the golden rule: The one with the gold rules. OK took the grant from the feds – guess who rules?
- Utah’s exchange has failed. By 2014 Utah’s exchange will either have to become an Obamacare exchange, as bad as Massachusetts’, or it will become defunct.
- Whether the state or the federal government sets up the exchange, rule making authority still lies in D.C.
- More and more states are backing away from the exchanges..
- State-based exchanges are to be looked at as a taxpayer-funded,, pro-Obamacare lobbying group.
- The states that are not setting up an exchange are trying to shape the future and will be better positioned economically in the future.
- States that implement their own exchanges will not have the flexibility to not comply with the federal requirements; the only flexibility states will have is to be more regulatory or to move to a single-payer system.
The $54 Million Grant – who pulls Oklahoma’s strings?
Click here to listen to the 4/3/11 Michael F. Cannon interview.
OK-SAFE continues to urge legislators to resist using any grant money for the implementation of insurance exchanges, and to not add language to any bills this session that would allow for the creation of an exchange in Oklahoma.
(Note: Oklahoma did not join the Florida lawsuit. Oklahoma filed a stand-alone lawsuit, modeled after the VA lawsuit, and the individual mandate is the only subject.)
Psalm 118: 8,9 – “It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man; It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes.”
R3publicans 