Today the state House of Representatives is expected to take its fifth vote in five consecutive working days on the Medicaid appropriation bill containing the private option form of expansion.

Needing a ridiculously high three-fourths majority for enactment, meaning 75 votes, the bill’s level of support has ranged from 69 votes to 73. Each time, supporters have said they’ll try again; that the votes for passage actually are there; that they’ll probably pass it next time, and, if not on that occasion, then the time after that.

Public understanding and public regard surely have been eroded with each call of the roll, each producing a vote said not to be the real vote. Make the Senate vote first, some said. Then, when the Senate voted and passed the measure, it appeared that only one House member, Mark Lowery of Maumelle, was brought on board.

What silliness, I can hear people saying. And I can hear them asking: Why don’t they take one vote and make it the real vote and quit playing games?

So I thought I would endeavor to explain, which is not to excuse.

First, there is no readily available or tenable alternative for the state budget taking effect July 1 if the private option is not passed. Thus the chosen course of action is to keep trying to pass the bill, especially since the requisite majority is so tantalizingly close.

General revenue savings reaped from converting state-matched Medicaid to full federal funding, and from receiving new insurance payments for otherwise uncompensated care at the state’s public hospital, are estimated at $89 million. That’s an amount Gov. Mike Beebe proposes to use in his proposed budget to bail out county jails for housing state prisoners and to send additional money to higher education.

There is no ready alternative nor any evident constituency for any alternative.

So far, 100 of the 135 members of the Legislature-27 of 35 senators and 73 of 100 House members-have favored the private option. That leaves only 35 legislators-eight senators and 27 representatives-who have opposed it. That is a minority so small that its only tool, its only consequence, is obstruction. As a positive force, offering a policy of its own, the anti-private-option legislative caucus is anemic, a non-factor.

Second, there are “no” votes in the House based not on the policy itself, but on personal pettiness. “Inside the Capitol politics,” some call it. Conceivably some of those voters could ultimately yield to the policy.

There are friends of state Rep. Terry Rice of Waldron, who thought he was going to become the historic Republican speaker of the House until Davy Carter blindsided him last year by lining up the Democratic caucus and a handful of Republicans. These friends of Rice don’t want Carter’s speakership to succeed.

You have a few “no” voters who would like a little something in return for their vote. They seek a favor perhaps less positive or popular or beneficial statewide than the deal that state Sen. Jane English of North Little Rock cut for work-force education reform in exchange for her dramatic 27th vote in the Senate.

Carter has said from the beginning that there will be no horse-trading in the House. He fears that once you make one deal to gain a vote, someone else might demand another to preserve his vote, and so on. Thus he is obliged not to concede, not to waver, even on his vow to call a vote every day until the bill passes.

Third, there are a few Republican representatives who may be worried less about the policy than about conservative opposition in primaries if they vote for the private option. Some are cowering from opposition that already exists.

The most vivid case: State Rep.Ann Clemmer of Bryant, a political science professor at UALR, voted for the private-option appropriation last year. But now she is a candidate for Congress in the 2nd District, for the seat being vacated by Tim Griffin.

She is opposed in the Republican primary by French Hill, a Little Rock establishment banker who, though he has been a member of the board of the Children’s Hospital, and although his wife is a lawyer in a firm representing insurance interests, says he opposes the private option.

Clemmer’s best chance against Hill is to rack up big votes among Tea Party-inclined Republican primary voters in Saline and Faulkner counties. She is loath to cede the most fervent anti-Obamacare vote to Hill. Thus she has been voting “no.” She is imprisoned in her public responsibility as a state representative by her desire to be a federal representative.

Might she gather up the courage of state Rep. Duncan Baird, who faces primary opposition for state treasurer, and state Rep. Andrea Lea of Russellville, who faces primary opposition for auditor-not to mention state Sen. Bruce Holland of Greenwood, who faces primary opposition from the aforementioned Terry Rice, term-limited in the House? Baird, Lea and Holland all have voted for the private option.

For all those reasons, Carter’s decision has been to keep voting, day after day. If he doesn’t get the 75 votes today, he may relent for a while.

The House Democratic caucus is weary of voting as a reliable block day after day while Republicans play games. The trouble with proceeding to other business is that other budget bills on the agenda will be out of context absent resolution of the private option.

So for orderliness, and perhaps for inevitability’s sake, a 75th vote today would be widely welcomed.

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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial, Pages 13 on 02/25/2014