Now drive into rural Oklahoma, where the school is trying to find teachers and the hospital is trying to survive.
Suddenly the language changes.
Now we’re asked whether we can afford it.
The history of Medicaid expansion makes the distinction between state leaders and Oklahoma voters particularly clear.
For years, Oklahoma’s Republican state leadership declined to expand Medicaid. Then Oklahoma voters made the decision themselves. In 2020, voters passed State Question 802 and put Medicaid expansion directly into the Oklahoma Constitution.
That matters where hospitals operate on thin margins. Medicaid coverage turns some previously uninsured patients into insured patients and reduces uncompensated care.
Government cannot afford everything. But scarcity doesn’t eliminate choices.
It reveals them. Our elected leaders have chosen to spend public resources subsidizing privateschool tuition. They have chosen to maintain corporate tax incentives. They have chosen an economic-development system offering qualifying data centers exemptions from taxes on property, equipment and, in some cases, electricity.
Those are policy choices made in Oklahoma City.
So when the conversation turns to a rural hospital or public school and we’re asked, “Can we afford it?” the better question may be what — and who — our elected officials have decided is worth spending public resources on.
A rural hospital is economic development too. It employs nurses, technicians and support staff who buy homes, shop locally and pay taxes.
More importantly, it keeps people alive.
A heart attack does not care that the nearest emergency room is now an hour away.
Not every rural problem was created at the Capitol. But after fifteen years in control, Republican state leaders cannot reasonably claim credit for Oklahoma’s successes while treating its failures as someone else’s responsibility.
Congress didn’t create Oklahoma’s private-school tax credit. Washington didn’t decide to maintain our corporate incentives. The president doesn’t determine how Oklahoma funds its schools.
Our elected state government makes those decisions.
Political parties are not football teams. This isn’t OU versus OSU. Supporting Donald Trump does not require supporting every decision made by Republican politicians in Oklahoma City, just as voting for a Democratic governor would not make a conservative voter a Democrat.
An Oklahoman can support a Republican Legislature and a Democratic governor — or the reverse. Divided government is one way competing institutions can check one another.
After fifteen years of unified Republican government, there is a record to examine. Republican candidates can defend it. Democrats and independents can explain what they would do differently.
Oklahoma City is not Washington.
We do not owe any political party our loyalty. We owe Oklahoma our attention.
— Colby Ingram Piedmont, Oklahoma
