As the Oklahoma House of Representatives considers Senate Bill 131 this week, a coalition of health care organizations called on the Oklahoma Legislature to vote to stop what they are calling a “flawed” plan to privatize health care for 1 million Medicaid recipients.

“In our discussions with legislators, we’ve heard several express opposition not only to the plan, but especially to the way the Legislature was not consulted,” said Jay Johnson, president of Duncan Regional Hospital and board chairman of the Oklahoma Hospital Association.

“Despite what some may believe, the plan to outsource Medicaid is not a runaway train. It can be stopped.”

Johnson said his primary concern with the proposed managed care plan, dubbed “SoonerSelect,” is the denial of needed medical treatment to protect the profits of large insurance companies.

“Oklahoma Health Care Authority projections show that to achieve cost savings under the managed care plan, Oklahoma would need to reduce services to Medicaid patients, specifically pregnant women, children and the expansion population, by up to 40 percent,” Johnson said. “This comes from the OHCA’s own actuarial advisor.”

Mary Clarke, M.D., president of the Oklahoma State Medical Association, said managed care will insert insurance companies between doctors and patients.

“We don’t want for-profit insurance companies to act as middlemen in the physician/ patient relationship,” said Clarke, a Stillwater-based family medicine physician. “Treatment decisions must be based on what is best for the patient, not the insurance company’s bottom line. To make things worse, the governor’s plan allows the insurance companies to auto-assign an insurance plan and doctor to the patient in some circumstances.”

A group of 16 organizations, representing thousands of medical professionals and patient advocates, is opposing privatization. Its membership includes doctors, nurses, dentists, mental health providers, hospitals, medical equipment distributors, ambulance services, hospice providers, and patient advocates representing the intellectual and developmental disabilities community.

“The last time Oklahoma used managed care, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, we lost 15-20 ambulance services a year, mostly in rural Oklahoma,” said Johnny L. Red, vice president of Sinor EMS in Clinton. “The result was that patients previously served by those services had much longer waits before an ambulance could arrive. That delay can be the difference between life and death.”