by Roby Brock (roby@talkbusiness.net)
Sen. Keith Ingram, D-West Memphis, noted that a near decade of help from the state’s Medicaid expansion program has stabilized Arkansas’ health care system, but now a new set of circumstances is challenging hospitals’ financial health.
In an interview on Talk Business & Politics, the chair of the Senate’s Hospital and Medicaid subcommittee, said the private option, also known as Arkansas Works and ARHome, has been an effective “backstop” to guard against hospital closures, especially in rural parts of the state.
“The Medicaid expansion – Arkansas Works, ARHome – is going to be 10 years old in 2023. Without that backstop, we would’ve lost so many rural hospitals in Arkansas, like the states that surround us. They’ve had a tremendous amount of hospital enclosures. So what has happened is that staved off the financial crisis that other states have gone through until this point,” he said.
