Arkansas Senate upholds governor's decision on keeping Medicaid plan

Gov. Asa Hutchinson speaks to a joint session of the Legislature at the start of the special session on Wednesday, April 6, 2016.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson speaks to a joint session of the Legislature at the start of the special session on Wednesday, April 6, 2016.

LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Senate has upheld Gov. Asa Hutchinson's decision to keep the state's first-in-the-nation hybrid Medicaid expansion, rejecting an attempt to override his veto of a budget measure that would have ended the subsidized insurance.

The Senate on Tuesday rejected by voice vote a motion to consider overriding Hutchinson's veto of the Medicaid budget bill provision that would have set a Dec. 31 end date for the program, which uses federal funds to purchase private insurance for the poor.

The override attempt had been widely expected to fail, since supporters of the hybrid expansion had supported the budget bill after Hutchinson vowed to veto the defunding provision. Hutchinson and legislative leaders devised the line-item veto approach to get around a deadlock over the program in the Senate.

Read Wednesday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

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