HOW WE SEE IT ‘Private Option’ Collaboration Deserves Chance

The Arkansas Legislature may turn the “private option” into the biggest tease state government ever inflicted on a population. Lawmakers will gather in Little Rock next month to begin a fiscal session of the General Assembly. The primary focus of these even-year sessions is adjusting the state’s budget to match anticipated income. For some, however, the session will become the front line of a continuing war against Obamacare.

Legislators and Gov. Mike Beebe last year demonstrated an admirable and amazing level of collaboration to fi nd a needed compromise approach to expanding health care coverage. It was an Arkansas-style victory in an atmosphere that teetered on the brink of Washington-style intractability. Instead, Arkansas tried something different. Why not use millions of dollars in new federal money to empower uninsured residents to get free or inexpensive health insurance through private insurance companies?

With Republicans dead-set against any form of government-run health insurance linked to the president, Arkansas’ approach allowed them to support a private market approach that didn’t grow government. While the additional federal funding was born of President Barack Obama’s Aff ordable Care Act, Arkansas leaders crafted a version that could pass muster with enough support from both sides to become law.

The approach allowed Democrats to follow Obamacare’s lead by expanding health-care coverage to tens of thousands of Arkansans who previously had been blocked from it or who couldn’t afford it. For a while, it looked like enough members of the Legislature gave up their “R” and “D” labels in favor of a two more important ones: Arkansan and leader.

Obama and the biggest accomplishment of his presidency are wildly unpopular among the Arkansas electorate, so the issue was far from settled. Some lawmakers who gave the private option a slim margin of victory last year have gotten a little more mushy in the months since, pressured by hard-core GOP purists who see no room for compromise. Then, last week, Jonesboro Republican John Cooper handily won a special election to the state Senate. A major plank in his campaign was opposition to Obamacare in all forms. The Democratic senator he replaced was a “yes” vote last year.

Beebe acknowledged last week Cooper’s election will make it “more diftcult to sustain the private option.” Legislative leaders say there’s no way to guarantee there are enough votes to fund Arkansas hybrid system that delivered new hope for medical coverage to an estimated 250,000 Arkansans.

The private option is in trouble. Opponents would love nothing more than to say they rejected Obamacare at the state level, no matter how much it hurts their fellow Arkansans in the process.

More people covered by health insurance means savings in other areas of Arkansas’ budget. The availability of insurance with no exemptions for pre-existing coverage means hospitals in Arkansas receive compensation for thousands of cases now being handled as “uncompensated care.” The funding, for some smaller hospitals, might make the difference in staying open.

We encourage state lawmakers to speak with their local hospital representatives before setting their votes in stone. If they are going to reject funding for the private option, they need to know they’re not so much hurting the president as they are their fellow Arkansans.

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