State receives report non-Medicaid changes

LITTLE ROCK — Although it was submitted Thursday, a consultant’s report recommending changes to the state’s Medicaid program, including the private option, won’t be released to the public until Wednesday, a state legislator said.

Rep. Charlie Collins, R-Fayetteville and a chairman of the 17-member Health Reform Legislative Task Force, said task force members will view hard copies of the report Monday and Tuesday at the Bureau of Legislative Research but won’t be allowed to take the copies out of the bureau’s offices.

The report will be released to the public at 10 a.m. Wednesday at the start of a task force meeting, he said.

Collins said he wanted to allow The Stephens Group consultants to present the report to the task force and answer questions from task force members on the day of the report’s release.

At the same time, he wanted to give task force members an opportunity to study the report and think of questions before the meeting.

“To me, it’s only fair to give the task force members an opportunity to review this before they’re going to be hit in the face with lots of good questions from people,” Collins said.

Marty Garrity, Legislative Research Bureau director, confirmed The Stephens Group submitted the report to her agency Thursday.

Under the private option, the state uses Medicaid money to buy insurance for more than 200,000 low-income Arkansans.

Citing the eventual cost of the program to the state and opposition by some legislators and others, Gov. Asa Hutchinson called in the Arkansas Legislature earlier this year to create the task force, which is expected to recommend a replacement for the private option by the end of this year.

If approved by the Legislature and federal officials, the recommended program would begin in 2017, when the federal waiver authorizing the private option expires.