A Tulsa hospital worker opened her electric bill this summer and found a $1,373 charge — more than her monthly rent — and decided to tell the internet about it. Over 100,000 people watched her TikTok and thought: yeah, same. This is not a Tulsa problem. This is an everywhere problem, and it is getting worse.
The Bill That Broke TikTok (And A Family's Budget)
Raelynn McMurchy works nights at a Tulsa hospital. She is not, by any stretch, someone you'd expect to go viral. But when she opened her most recent electric bill and saw $1,373 staring back at her, she did what any reasonable person would do in 2026: she pointed a camera at herself and said what she was thinking.
"Our electric bill is literally more than our rent this month," she said, according to NPR. "I make decent money and that's not sustainable for my family. That's crazy."
She was right on all counts. The bill included a nearly $600 deposit tacked on by her utility, Public Service Company of Oklahoma, because of some previous late payments. McMurchy launched a Change.org petition calling on Oklahoma regulators to do something about the spiraling costs. More than 100,000 people watched the video. The petition kept growing. The bills did not go down.
Hotter Summers, Higher Bills, and a Utility That Wanted 15% More
Here is the backdrop. Electricity prices across the country have been climbing faster than the overall cost of living, according to the Labor Department. That is bad on its own. Then you layer on a summer in Tulsa with more than twice the average number of triple-digit days, and the fans and air conditioners run constantly, and the bill doubles, and suddenly a family that was just barely keeping up is not keeping up at all.
PSO, Tulsa's main power company, wanted to raise residential rates by about 15% this year. After negotiating with the state attorney general, NPR reports, the company agreed to drop that to 1% in a settlement that still needs regulatory approval. So: congratulations, you are only getting squeezed a little harder instead of a lot harder. The triple-digit heat waves, for the record, are becoming more frequent and intense because of climate change, largely driven by fossil fuel combustion. The same fossil fuel industry that Oklahoma has spent decades protecting and subsidizing. Funny how that works.
Oklahoma Cuts Power at Five Times the National Rate. Five Times.
This is the part where you need to stop and actually sit with a number. According to a first-of-its-kind tally by the U.S. Energy Department, PSO cuts power to customers at more than five times the average national rate. Not 10% higher. Not even double. Five times. In one of the hottest states in the country, during summers that keep getting more brutal.
Some states prohibit shutoffs entirely during hot summer months. Oklahoma is not one of them. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities in the state, allows shutoffs as long as the heat index stays below 101 degrees. Consumer advocates have tried to lower that threshold. They have failed.
"I wish every corporation commissioner had to sit in a house that had no electricity when it's 95," Joanne Pearson, who runs the Helping Hand Ministry in downtown Tulsa, told NPR. That's not a complicated wish. It's barely even a policy ask. It's just: please understand what you are allowing to happen to people.
The Charity Standing Between Thousands of Families and Darkness
Every Monday and Tuesday morning, people line up outside the Helping Hand Ministry in downtown Tulsa holding disconnection warning letters. A volunteer named John Johnson sits at a duct-taped desk and calls PSO's parent company to negotiate. He offers partial payments. He keeps people's lights on, at least until next month.
Helping Hand spends up to $14,000 a week on overdue utility bills, NPR reports, funded by foundations and Tulsa's First Presbyterian Church across the street. They help a few dozen people avoid shutoffs each week. At least 19,000 Tulsa-area customers still have their power cut off every single month.
Eric Widger works at a toilet paper factory near Tulsa. His power bill has doubled to around $500 a month. "Payday for me is Friday and they were going to cut it off Thursday," he told NPR. Getting power restored after a shutoff can cost $700 or $800 in fees and deposits on top of the overdue balance. So one missed paycheck becomes a hole that takes months to dig out of. That is not a personal finance failure. That is a system designed to punish people for being poor.
The CEO's Response Was Exactly What You'd Expect
Last week, PSO CEO Leigh Anne Strahler sent customers a message defending the company's position. "We know affordability is important," she wrote, according to NPR. "We understand rising costs affect your household budget, your family and your business, and we do not take any change to customer bills lightly."
Strahler pointed to the utility's investments in additional power generation and grid hardening to handle more extreme weather. Which, sure, infrastructure investment is real and necessary. But it is a strange comfort to offer to the 19,000 families getting their power shut off this month in the middle of a heat wave.
The scale of this problem nationally is staggering. According to the Energy Department tally cited by NPR, more than 13 million Americans have their power shut off over unpaid bills every year. About a million of those shutoffs happen in August alone. August. The hottest month of the year, in a country getting hotter every year.
The Dingo Take
You are supposed to believe that 19,000 families losing power every month in Tulsa is a billing problem. A personal responsibility problem. A budgeting problem. A problem that a Change.org petition and a church across the street should be solving with $14,000 a week in donated funds while a utility company posts profits and its CEO sends apologetic form letters.
It is not a billing problem. It is a policy choice. Oklahoma regulators chose to allow shutoffs at 100-degree heat indexes. Oklahoma's corporate commissioners chose not to lower that threshold when advocates asked. PSO chose to come to the table asking for a 15% rate hike. The fossil fuel industry that made Oklahoma's summers progressively more survivable-with-air-conditioning spent decades lobbying against the regulations that might have slowed any of this down. Every link in that chain is a decision made by someone with power, on behalf of someone with money, at the expense of a hospital worker in Tulsa who now owes more for electricity than she does for her rent.
Thirteen million Americans lose power over unpaid bills every year. A million of them in August. That number will go up next summer, because next summer will be hotter. The summer after that will be hotter still. The bills will keep climbing. The charity money will keep running short. And somewhere a utility CEO will keep writing emails explaining that she takes affordability very seriously.
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