On Thursday, U.S. Representative Rick Crawford (AR-1) sent letters to federal regulators stating his “grave concern” over the proposed acquisition of Aetna, Inc., one of the nation’s largest insurance companies, by CVS Health, a Rhode Island-based health care conglomerate that has been at the center of a political showdown in Arkansas.
On Wednesday, the state House of Representatives voted 79-15 to approve the budget for Arkansas Works, the Medicaid-funded program that provides health insurance to 285,000 Arkansans.
On Tuesday, the state Senate narrowly approved another year of funding for Arkansas Works, the program providing health care coverage to some 285,000 low-income adults through the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion.
Governor says Arkansas will be first to roll out Medicaid work requirement.
Arkansas has joined another federal lawsuit seeking an end to the Affordable Care Act, state Attorney General Leslie Rutledge announced late Monday afternoon.
On Monday afternoon, Governor Hutchinson said he would call a special session of the Arkansas legislature to address low reimbursement rates provided to pharmacies by middleman companies called pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs.
Since Jan. 1, Brandon Cooper, a pharmacist at Soo’s Drug Store in Jonesboro, has turned away a number of patients seeking to fill routine prescriptions. The problem is not that the pharmacy lacks the drugs in question or that the patients don’t have insurance, Cooper said. It’s that the state’s largest insurance carrier, Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, recently changed the way it pays for pharmaceuticals.
Will do further study before seeking private provider.
On Thursday, Governor Hutchinson announced that enrollment in Arkansas’s Medicaid program has declined by almost 10 percent over the last year — from 1,048,000 on Jan. 1, 2017, to 931,000 on Jan. 1, 2018.
In Benton and Washington counties, jailing youth is increasingly used as a last resort. Can the rest of the state follow suit?
Foster kids may go months without caseworker visit, the DCFS tells legislative panel.
But progress lags that of neighbors. Part 2 of 2.
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