Months after becoming the first state to offer health care coverage to lower-income residents through a private option rather than Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, Arkansas finally agreed to extend this closely watched political compromise.
Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, describes it as a groundbreaking, albeit complex, plan for many other states to ponder noting how it took an enormous amount of time to work through the logistics so that both the executive and legislative branches of government would be on board. His sense is that most states that have turned down Medicaid expansion funds would like to find a way to get to the yes column, noting that the Arkansas model is one way to accomplish this goal.
