Does election of one Republican to a northeast Arkansas state Senate seat really signal the demise of the private option that has brought health insurance to tens of thousands of Arkansans?

Republican John Cooper, a retired phone company employee, bested the Democratic nominee in a special election earlier this month in the Jonesboro area, vowing he’d work to de-fund the Medicaid expansion that is part of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act.

The “private option” is the compromise state lawmakers hammered out in last year’s regular legislative session to expand Medicaid by using federal dollars to buy private insurance for eligible uninsured Arkansans, rather than direct expansion of the Medicaid rolls.

The newly eligible include many of the state’s working poor, whose incomes were just above the cutoffs for traditional Medicaid.

Approval of the private option last year came on an incredibly close vote. The approval required a three-quarter majority in each of the two chambers of the Legislature.

To continue the program, the Legislature must again pass an appropriation to direct those federal Medicaid dollars when it meets next month for a fiscal session.

Passage will require 75 votes in the 100-member House and 27 votes in the 35-member Senate.

Those are tough numbers to achieve, especially when the vote involves anything related to “Obamacare,” as the federal health care law has become known.

Nevertheless, supporters found enough Republicans and Democrats in the two chambers to approve the plan last year.

All but one of those people are still in the Legislature. The only change is Cooper. He was elected to replace former Sen. Paul Bookout, a Democrat who resigned after acknowledging ethics violations.

Bookout’s vote last year for the private option counted toward a 28-vote Senate total for the private option. That was one vote more than the Senate required.

Arguably, Cooper’s planned vote against the private option could trim the total to just enough to pass the appropriation. But that outcome would require all the lawmakers who voted for the private option last year to support it again this year.

That’s where the real problem with this upcoming vote lies.

No incoming freshman senator, no matter how recent his election nor how large his margin of victory (57 percent), should be expected to lead the Legislature away from a hard-won bipartisan compromise.

What might cause one or two or more of these critical legislators to stray, however, is fear that their own constituents will throw them out in upcoming primary elections if they continue to support the private option.

What happened in the Jonesboro-area Senate race is triggering worries about more conservative foes for Republicans who will hammer them for voting for the private option.

Of course, voting against the appropriation will take away health insurance that some of their constituents have already enrolled for or might sign up for in the future.

So there is a consequence for abandoning the plan, too, particularly if an incumbent Republican makes it through a primary to face a Democrat in the general election.

Think such a “flip flop” won’t be a campaign issue? Think again.

As of last week, the state Department of Human Services reported a participation level in Arkansas’ private option at 78,000.

That’s 78,000 people who couldn’t afford insurance before these federal dollars became available, some of whom perhaps could not have bought insurance before at any price because of some existing condition.

Those people are prospective voters as are others who want to see the Affordable Care Act succeed whether they are beneficiaries of the private option or not.

Beyond the political ramifications, there are fiscal arguments for accepting the federal dollars to expand Medicaid, including the projection that dropping the private option would create an $89 million deficit in the state’s proposed $5 billion budget. Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, has said lawmakers would have to repeal tax cuts they approved last year or cut the budget to make up for the loss.

That impact is not necessarily something that voters, particularly those against anything to do with Obamacare, might bother to understand. But lawmakers must, if they are doing their jobs.

Sen. David Sanders, a Little Rock Republican who helped craft the private option, has said that policy arguments won the debate last year and should prevail again.

Whether they do prevail depends on Sanders and the other 26 returning senators as well as the House members who voted for the private option last year, not so much on the newly elected Cooper.

BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.