Yesterday, Arkansas senators joined their counterparts in the House of Representatives and decided to make health coverage affordable for more Arkansas citizens. The “Private Option” will allow the state to use Medicaid dollars to buy private insurance plans for low-income Arkansans, thus providing an affordable health coverage option to 250,000 people. Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families would like to publicly thank our senators for voting for this very important measure.

A few of our elected officials deserve special thanks for their strong leadership throughout this process. Gov. Mike Beebe worked with federal administration officials to make sure Arkansas could come up with an inventive way to provide more health coverage to the people of this state. Rep. John Burris, Sen. Jon Dismang, and Sen. David Sanders showed extraordinary leadership, helping to craft an innovative approach to extending health coverage to more Arkansans and making the case to their colleagues time and time again that this was the right decision to make for Arkansas. House Speaker Davy Carter and President Pro Tem of the Senate Michael Lamoureux did an exceptional job of ushering the bills through both chambers. We would also like to thank all of our senators and representatives who worked overtime yesterday evening to make sure we took this crucial step.

As we have said many times, this option is a good deal for our economy, our local hospitals, and all of the state’s children and families. Today’s vote was an important victory for hard-working, low-income folks in Arkansas who would otherwise have no other option for affordable health coverage. We are excited about this opportunity to make sure more Arkansans are healthy, and we are very happy that our lawmakers were able to come together and do the right thing for the people of this state.

Rich Huddleston, executive director of AACF, says yesterday’s vote will move the state forward.

“Here in Arkansas we’ve shown how important and effective Medicaid is, especially ARKids First,” Huddleston says. “Although this private option isn’t what we expected at the beginning of the session, it does get us closer to our goal of making sure all Arkansans have access to affordable coverage. Since  ARKids started in 1997, we’ve seen the percentage of uninsured kids drop drastically. Yesterday’s vote means we can help 80,000 uninsured parents in this state get coverage too. All in all, this well help around 250,000 people. This is definitely a good deal for Arkansas.”

Now, the work of implementation begins. AACF will continue to provide accurate and timely information to the public and to lawmakers as the Private Option goes from an idea to a reality. We will also be paying very close attention to the implementation process. We want to make sure that as we move toward more affordable health coverage for all Arkansans, we do it in a way that is in the best interest of this state’s children and families.