Our goal at Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families has always been to make sure quality, affordable health coverage is available to every Arkansan that needs it. For a lot of working Arkansans private health insurance is too expensive and many don’t get covered through work. To make matters worse, working Arkansans remain almost universally ineligible for state assistance via Medicaid. The Affordable Care Act provides a way to make sure these Arkansans have the health insurance they need.

Our lawmakers have a historic opportunity to extend health coverage to 250,000 Arkansans. Earlier in the week came news that the state has been granted new flexibility in deciding how we move forward with extending our Medicaid program. Under the deal struck by Governor Beebe and the federal government, low-income adults will now be able to get private insurance through Arkansas’s new exchange marketplace while our federal tax dollars cover 100 percent of the premiums for the first three years. All we have to do is decide to accept the federal money that’s already out there on the table as a result of the Affordable Care Act. AACF has never been more optimistic that the working people of Arkansas will finally get the health coverage they deserve.

This new option still gets us to our goal of affordable, quality coverage for all, and that’s a good thing. However, we feel that even if low-income families have private market exchange plans, their coverage level, benefit packages, and copays/cost-sharing must meet Medicaid standards.

There are a few potential benefits to this new proposal:

• Reduced churning: families stay on the same type of plans even when incomes change
• Improved provider reimbursements: typically, private insurance reimburses at a higher rate than Medicaid, thus potentially improving access to care
• There are more than 80,000 low-income parents in Arkansas who don’t have health coverage. This plan gives them an option. We know that when adults are covered, their kids are more likely to be covered too.

There are still a lot of details to hammer out, but it’s important to be aware of the needs of low-income families if Arkansas chooses to enroll them in private market health coverage.

You can show your support for extending health coverage to Arkansas families that need it by following this link. Write your legislators and tell them how important it is to work together toward making Arkansas healthy. You can also show your support by joining us on Thursday, March 7, for Health Coverage Action Day at the Capitol. Find all the details here.