Arkansas
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Maternal and Infant Health in State Rural Health Transformation Proposals Set Promising Priorities in an Uncertain Landscape
All 50 states applied for CMS’ Rural Health Transformation (RHT) program, a $50 billion fund borne from a need to reassure members of Congress during the final debate over H.R. 1 that Medicaid cuts would not decimate their states’ rural health systems. As previous blogs have detailed, the RHT program presents a unique opportunity for…
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Community Health Workers are a Focus of Rural Health Transformation Applications
Awards for the Rural Health Transformation (RHT) program were released on December 29, 2025, and state applications with proposals for the funds have been made public, covering a range of activities aiming to increase access to care, develop infrastructure, and enhance workforces. As we’ve written about previously, community health workers (CHWs) are a critical workforce…
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Wisconsin Passes 12-Month Postpartum Medicaid Extension, Leaving Arkansas as the Last State Without It
About a third of maternal deaths occur between one week and one year postpartum. The American Rescue Plan Act provided states with the option to extend postpartum Medicaid and CHIP coverage from 60 days to 12 months and the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 20223 made this option permanent. From 2021 to 2025, 48 states and…
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State by State Medicaid and CHIP Enrollment Data
This tracker shows enrollment data for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in all 50 states and DC, from January 2025 to the most recent month available. Data include total Medicaid/CHIP enrollment, as well as enrollment for children, adults, and Medicaid expansion. Historical data are also included to provide additional context for state…
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How Would Changes to Federal Medicaid Expansion Funding Impact People in “Trigger” States and Those with Expansion Enshrined in State Constitutions?
Congress is currently considering draconian cuts to Medicaid that would mean millions of low-income Americans lose access to affordable health care. But both the type of federal cuts and how the joint state-federal Medicaid program operates in each state mean that the impact on people living in different states would vary considerably. The major difference…
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Medicaid’s Role in Small Towns and Rural Areas
Key Findings Background One-fifth of people in the United States live in areas that are classified as non-urban. Residents of rural areas and small towns face additional challenges accessing needed health services compared to residents of metro areas for a variety of reasons including acute provider shortages, limited connectivity, and long distances to travel to…
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CMS Announces State Recipients of the Transforming Maternal Health (TMaH) Model
Last year, CMS announced a grant opportunity to boost state Medicaid agency efforts to improve maternal health in the United States. The Transforming Maternal Health (TMaH) Model seeks to help states develop a comprehensive approach to the perinatal period that addresses the whole person’s physical, mental health, and social needs that may be experienced during…
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Federal Funding Cuts to Medicaid May Trigger Automatic Loss of Health Coverage for Millions of Residents of Certain States
Despite virtually no discussion of Medicaid during the election, Medicaid is facing proposals for significant reductions in federal funding. My colleague Edwin Park has already detailed some of the discussion around these cuts – which are being considered in service of facilitating an extension of tax breaks, the majority of which would go to the…
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State Medicaid and CHIP Snapshots, 2023
The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families (CCF) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) created factsheets underscoring the importance of Medicaid in providing coverage for children in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Sources available here. Previous snapshots can be found here (2019), here (2018) and here (2017). Check out more interactive…
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Arkansas Unwinding Numbers Show What’s at Stake for Very Young Children
Georgetown University Center for Children and Families (CCF) has sounded the alarm bells for more than a year warning that without strong state leadership and careful attention, millions of children, parents, disabled people and others eligible for Medicaid could be erroneously disenrolled for procedural reasons. Children are far more likely to lose Medicaid and CHIP…
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Low-Income Parents at Significant Risk Under the House-Passed Medicaid Work Reporting Requirements in Debt Ceiling Bill
We’ve been closely reading Section 321 of the House-passed debt ceiling bill which would establish a pernicious new maze of red tape to trip people up and cause them to lose Medicaid coverage. While posing as a “work requirement”, this is really a plan to make people jump through more hoops in order to keep…
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Unwinding Data from Arkansas – April 1, 2023
The Arkansas Department of Human Services posted their “Monthly Unwinding Report – April 2023,” which includes data from the March 2023 reporting period. View Report
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What Happens when the Medicaid “Unwinding” Meets a Natural Disaster?
It turns out that you can’t schedule natural disasters. They happen and they don’t particularly care when. Most recent case in point: Two weeks ago, tornados devastated three counties in Arkansas and six counties in Mississippi, resulting in approval of federal disaster assistance by President Biden and, in the case of Mississippi, a Public Health…
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Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Supreme Court Drops Medicaid Work Requirements Case, But Still Does Damage
If you blinked at just the wrong moment last week, you might have missed that the Supreme Court erased several years of critical Medicaid law with just one 113-word order. Poof! On Monday, April 18th, the Supreme Court issued an order in the cases on appeal reviewing the legality of approvals of work requirements by…
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Medicaid Wars: The Unwinding (and Litigation) Continues (Episode IV)
It’s been seven months and change since the Biden Administration took office. What it found waiting for it on January 20 was not just a crisis of democracy and a global pandemic and a surge of unaccompanied children at the border, but also a large pile of policy intended to undercut the Administration’s ability to…
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New Urban Institute Estimates of 1.7 Million More Uninsured Children if Supreme Court Overturns Affordable Care Act
On Tuesday, November 10, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for California v. Texas, a case in which a group of conservative attorneys general led by the Texas Attorney General and the Trump Administration are seeking to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act (ACA). Researchers from the Urban Institute recently projected that the number…
