Bill’s defeat ensures Arkansas children and families continue to receive benefits of ACA

Arkansas children and families can rest easy today with the knowledge that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), which ensures more Americans have access to affordable health care coverage and other needed services, will continue to be implemented in Arkansas. State Sen. Missy Irvin’s Senate Bill 709, An Act to Create Healthcare Reform Accountability Act, failed to receive the five votes needed to pass in Senate Public Health, Welfare, and Labor Committee. SB709 would have prevented state departments and agencies from implementing any part of the ACA unless specific state legislation was passed to do so and the agencies provided extensive reporting to the legislature on the projected financial impact of the law.

We opposed Irvin’s bill because it undermines progress toward fixing our broken health care system. Our energy needs to be spent moving forward, not backwards, for the health of Arkansans. The ACA is changing our state’s health landscape, providing new coverage for hundreds of thousands of Arkansans (regardless of pre-existing conditions) and ensuring that the health care system responds to preventive care needs. Benefits already in place ensure that children can’t be denied insurance coverage due to pre-existing conditions such as asthma, young adults can remain on their parents’ insurance until they are 26, and lifetime limits on payments for serious illnesses are a thing of the past. Under the ACA, children willadditionally receive a range of preventive care services including obesity programs, oral health care, health education, and school-based health clinics.

The ACA also benefits our state’s economy with every dollar from the upcoming Medicaid expansion in 2014 benefiting the economy six times over, according to a recent Walton School of Business study. Additionally, more than 40,000 small businesses in the state will be eligible for tax credits if they choose to offer health coverage.

We were not alone in our opposition of SB709 today. Arkansas Attorney General Counsel Dennis Hansen argued that a vote for Irvin’s bill would put the state at risk of a lawsuit under the supremacy clause, which basically states that federal law requiring implementation of the ACA overrides state law. If passed, consequences to the state could include federal government oversight for Arkansas’s ACA implementation and the risk of jeopardizing our federal partnership with Medicaid. Department of Human Services Director John Selig said that Irvin’s bill could essentially shut down the state’s Medicaid program, which currently serves 775,000 Arkansans. In summary, our state’s focus should be on moving forward, not backward-putting the right rules and systems in place to deliver quality, affordable, dependable care that works for families and our state’s economy.