Oklahoma: Medicaid enrollment up 27% since COVID hit; up to 215,000 more about to enroll starting July 1st

I've once again relaunched my project from last fall to track Medicaid enrollment (both standard and expansion alike) on a monthly basis for every state dating back to the ACA being signed into law.

For the various enrollment data, I'm using data from Medicaid.gov's Medicaid Enrollment Data Collected Through MBES reports. Unfortunately, they've only published enrollment data through December 2020. In most states I've been able to get more recent enrollment data from state websites and other sources. For 2021 Oklahoma data, I'm using estimates based on raw data from the Oklahoma Health Care Authority.

Oklahoma was one of 14 states which hadn't expanded Medicaid eligibility under the ACA...until last summer, when voters passed a statewide referendum to do just that. Actual enrollment doesn't kick off until July 1st (just 10 days from now), but nearly 100,000 Sooners had already signed up as of June 8th, and according to this article, the eventual total could reach up to 215,000.

Oklahoma's non-ACA Medicaid enrollment slowly shrank from around 775,000 to 650,000 from 2014 - 2020...but since the COVID pandemic hit in early 2020, it's increased a whopping 27%.

Oklahoma has about 3.96 million residents according to the 2020 U.S. Census. As of April 2021, around 806,000 of them were enrolled in Medicaid, or 20.4% of the state population.