Private-option vote is set aside

Speaker says taking up bill a day-to-day decision now

Rep. Jonathan Barnett, R-Siloam Springs, talks with Rep. Karen Hopper, R-Mountain Home, on the House floor Tuesday. A proposal to restrict whom stretches of highways can be named for was defeated Tuesday, and opponents saw it as aimed at Barnett, whose name is on part of U.S. 412.

Rep. Jonathan Barnett, R-Siloam Springs, talks with Rep. Karen Hopper, R-Mountain Home, on the House floor Tuesday. A proposal to restrict whom stretches of highways can be named for was defeated Tuesday, and opponents saw it as aimed at Barnett, whose name is on part of U.S. 412.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

For the first time in a week, the Arkansas House of Representatives met without voting on a funding bill for the state’s private-option Medicaid expansion - and House leadership said Tuesday that they don’t know when the next vote will happen.

House Speaker Davy Carter, R-Cabot, said before voting began last week that the House would vote every day until the measure passed.

But after losing votes on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of last week, Carter opted not to take a fifth vote Tuesday. No further votes were scheduled by day’s end.

As he did the day before, Carter said Tuesday that it would be a “game-time decision” on whether the House will take up Senate Bill 111 to fund the private option today.

“There’s a whole lot of other things that we’re going to focus on,” Carter said. “We have to set the budget for the state of Arkansas, and we need to do that in the next week to 10 days. We’re going to get through all of that, and I still think we’re going to work our way through this situation.”

The funding bill, which would appropriate $915 million in federal Medicaid dollars to provide private health insurance to 100,000 poor Arkansans, was rejected four days in a row last week. It takes at least 75 votes in the 100-member House for passage; the measure never received more than 71 votes.

The measure passed the Senate 27-8 last week with no votes to spare and required the intervention of Gov. Mike Beebe. In exchange for extra workforce training funds and a reorganization of those programs, Sen. Jane English,R-North Little Rock, agreed to switch her vote and support the private option.

Beebe had said previously that he’d hoped to stay out of the vote-wrangling for the private-option funding bill. But he said Tuesday that several legislators have come to see him since the House impasse began.

“There are folks who have asked me to talk to some folks, and some other folks who came in to talk to me on their own … and that is ongoing,” he said.

The governor declined to reveal who might be willing to change their vote.

“As you might imagine, it’s sensitive and confidential. So far it’s been productive, and no one has gone away mad or screaming or upset.”

The private option uses federal Medicaid money to buy private health-insurance policies for adults with incomes of up to 138 percent of the poverty level - for example, $15,860 for an individual and $32,500 for a family of four.

Supporters of the program have said that ending funding for the private option would strip health insurance from people who have recently enrolled in the insurance plans. Opponents argue that the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which authorizes the Medicaid expansion, will add to the national debt and that the state can’t afford the 10 percent cost of the program that it will be required to pick up beginning in 2020.

Beebe has estimated that ending the program will put an $89 million hole in the state’s proposed $5 billion budget for fiscal 2015 because the state would lose out on hundreds of millions of federal Medicaid dollars. But opponents say they doubt that eliminating the private option would affect the budget that dramatically.

Despite having the backing of Beebe, Carter, Senate President Pro Tempore Michael Lamoureux, R-Russellville, and the entire Democratic legislative caucus, private-option supporters have struggled to come up with the 75 percent super majority necessary in both chambers to approve the appropriation.

Carter said he was disappointed in some members who pushed to amend the private option but then voted against the proposal even after their changes were adopted. The House and Senate approved language proposed by Rep. Nate Bell, R-Mena, that barred the state from advertising or actively promoting the private option. Carter said the negotiations “turned out to not be in good faith” because the amendment was supposed to result in additional votes for the measure. Instead, Bell was the only representative to switch from “no” to “yes.”

“A handful of those members that were in involved in that - that were a part of those negotiations with Rep. Bell - are some of the ones that are now saying that I’m refusing to negotiate and others are refusing to negotiate, which in reality is not true,” Carter said.

Carter declined to name the representatives he says didn’t act in good faith.

Bell likewise said he was disappointed in a few members of his caucus but also declined to name them Tuesday.

“At this point, what negotiations that are ongoing are sensitive and I would rather not make any further statements about that,” he said.

Bell raised the possibility that the Legislature might need to hold a special session to address funding the private option.

“We can’t just continue to sit here and vote on the same bill over and over,” he said. “We still have additional bills to work with, and we have some other issues that we’re working through. Let’s get those done, and if we can’t get this, let’s go home and come back in a special session and handle it.”

Supporters of the funding bill expressed frustration with the daily vote strategy.

House Minority Leader Rep. Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, said several members of the Democratic Caucus had concerns about casting so many votes on the private-option funding bill, especially in light of coming political campaigns in which they’ll be blasted by opponents for each vote.

“That’s been a concern of many of our members,” Leding said. “A lot of members were frustrated coming in day after day. And, to the people who are holding out I would say, ‘where is your plan ?’”

A letter from 27 Republicans - two of whom voted for the bill during Friday’s vote - arrived at Carter’s office Monday urging the speaker to mediate a negotiation between opponents and supporters of the bill. The move is necessary to overcome “an impasse [that] has occurred that cannot be resolved without more unnecessary tension within the House membership and within our own caucus,” they wrote in the letter.

Two Republican representatives, Les “Skip” Carnine, R-Rogers, and Mary Lou Slinkard, R-Gravette, who were targeted last week as possibilities for switching their votes from no to yes, did not sign the letter. Both maintained earlier this week that they are still prepared to vote no on the measure.

Rep. Ann Clemmer, R-Benton, who voted for the private option in 2013 but opposed it this year, said she still is a“no” vote. Clemmer said her switched vote is unrelated to her U.S. House bid in the 2nd Congressional District.

Meanwhile, on the House floor Tuesday, Leding asked that House Bill 1038, the funding bill for the secretary of state’s office, be again withheld from consideration. He also introduced an amendment that would prevent highways constructed with federal dollars from being named after individuals who were chairmen of the state Highway Commission or who were chairmen of a standing committee of the General Assembly.

The measure failed, with just 23 votes of support. Opponents argued that it was directed at Rep. Jonathan Barnett, R-Siloam Springs, a former highway commissioner with a 2.1-mile stretch of U.S. 412 named after him, and who as a state representative has voted consistently against the private option.

Leding said the proposal was made to be consistent with how the Legislature deals with appropriating federal dollars. Opponents of the private option have said they’re worried that the federal Medicaid dollars will add to the overall national debt, but Leding said federal transportation funds do the same thing.

“If it’s not a personal attack, it’s pretty narrow in it’s definition,” said House Majority Leader Bruce Westerman, R-Hot Springs. “There’s certainly someone in the General Assembly who is not voting for the Medicaid expansion who fits the criteria of this bill. And I don’t even know if Rep. Barnett wants a highway named after him, but I don’t feel that this is the appropriate response to a serious problem.”

Leding denied the accusation.

“It absolutely was not a personal attack,” he said. “The amendment was about establishing consistency. We’ve had members who have expressed concerns about other appropriations [that use federal dollars], so it was about testing consistency.” Michael R. Wickline of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette contributed to this article.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/26/2014