What? Still no plan, Rep. Cotton?
About 225,000 Arkansans are too poor to qualify for a subsidy to buy health insurance on the exchange, and too "wealthy" to qualify for the state's traditional Medicaid. But because the state expanded, using a "private option" to provide coverage,
155,567 of them now have insurance.
"We now know that an overwhelming majority of Arkansans in the program would have likely gone without health insurance had the Legislature not passed the Private Option," said John Selig, director of the Arkansas Department of Human Services. "Clearly there was a real need in a lot of these families." […]
Statewide, 61 percent of Arkansans in the program are women and 64 percent are ages 19 to 44 years old, a somewhat younger population than those getting coverage through the federal insurance marketplaces, said Arkansas Medicaid Director Andy Allison.
"The average age and sheer number of people in the Private Option will have a significant impact on competiveness and strength of the state’s insurance market moving forward," Allison said.
This is the program that Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who is running for the Senate,
doesn't have a position on. But he does know that he wants to repeal Obamacare, which someone should really tell him also means repealing Arkansas's private option Medicaid. And taking any hope of insurance coverage away from 155,567 Arkansans (and growing—there's no deadline for applying for the program).