BETWEEN THE LINES: Session Ends; Arkansas Survives

In spite of themselves, Arkansas’ lawmakers managed to get the major work of the legislative session done.

The Legislature actually finished on a positive note.

State legislators headed home this week, having finally passed a balanced budget and having disposed of that nagging question about Medicaid expansion.

At least lawmakers got their part done. Federal approval must follow on this Medicaid deal.

Assuming it does, the result may be a precedent other states could copy to use newly available Medicaid dollars to buy private health insurance for their citizens, too.

Late last week, the House and Senate smoothed out their differences on what they’ve dubbed Arkansas’ “private option” to Medicaid expansion.

Gov. Mike Beebe signed the measure into law Tuesday.

Call it what you will.

The plan gives the state’s working poor a way to have health insurance and the state a means to use the federal money that could have gone for direct expansion of the state’s Medicaid rolls. The state will instead spend the money to buy health coverage for eligible Arkansans through a state exchange.

All of it derives from “Obamacare,” as detractors dubbed the federal Affordable Care Act.

President Barack Obama and others have since embraced the term, but it is nonetheless what a number of those Arkansas lawmakers who eventually voted for the “private option” pledged never to support.

What is important is enough of the state’s lawmakers, more than three-quarters of each chamber, went along with the proposal to take advantage of this federal money to meet a real need for an awful lot of their Arkansas constituents, people who simply can’t afford health insurance on their own.

Incorporation of that federal money into the overall state budget also allowed some tax cuts that might not have been possible otherwise and provided other benefits that will inure to all Arkansans, partly because hospitals won’t have to provide quite as much indigent care to uninsured patients. There are similar benefits to other health care providers and the economy in general from the infusion of all the new federal money to Arkansas.

It was a good compromise to come out of the Republican-led Legislature. Unlike other measures that have drawn national attention to Arkansas, this action shed good light on the state and the ability of a GOP-controlled Legislature and a Democratic governor to get a job done. That’s the bipartisanship people crave from leadership now.

Honestly, when the session began, it seemed like more such cooperation might be possible. Then the more conservative lawmakers took off on a social agenda that has not helped the state’s image so much. Some of the bad legislation will be wiped away with court challenges eventually; but the uncompromising, we’ll-show-you-who’s-in-charge-now attitude from some of the newly empowered Republicans tarnished this Legislature’s overall legacy.

What’s worse, the environment created there threatened to unhinge expansion of health insurance to the Arkansans this private option will serve. Finally, wiser heads prevailed to strike the compromise with a private option. Lawmakers also managed to clear the way to provide incentive financing for that big steel mill in Mississippi County with its promise of high-paying jobs for the Delta. And they wrote a $4.9 billion state budget, balancing all that spending and more against projected revenue for the next fiscal year.

Look again at that number and remember that the budget is still the most critical job for any Legislature. That work is finally done. So lawmakers have recessed until May 17, when they will return to make corrections or consider overrides to gubernatorial vetoes, if necessary, then formally end this long and dift cult session.

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