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Funding for public schools, higher education, prisons and other state needs would be cut under a budget proposal released Monday by House Speaker Jeremy Gillam in anticipation of a possible legislative failure to reauthorize funding of the state's expanded Medicaid program in the coming fiscal session. The speaker said the cuts would be necessary to fill a $122 million shortfall created from the state no longer accepting federal Medicaid dollars to purchase private health insurance for low-income Arkansans. (Willems, Fanney and Wickline, 4/12)

The Legislature last week approved Gov. Asa Hutchinson's plan to keep and rework the expansion, which uses federal funds to purchase private insurance for the poor. The votes were shy of the three­-fourths support that the Medicaid budget bill funding the expansion will need. Lawmakers will take up that measure at a legislative session set to begin Wednesday. Gillam said most state agencies would see a cut of about 3 percent if the program ends. (4/11)

Two House bills meant to save kynect and the state's current Medicaid expansion died in a Senate committee Monday after an unusual move to pass the bills "with no expression" failed. The vote prompted objections from Democrats on the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, who called the attempt to move the bills along without actually voting in favor of them a political stunt to spare Republicans from having to vote in support of "Obamacare." (Yetter, 4/11)

Long-shot efforts to keep the state's health insurance exchange and Medicaid expansion intact had an anticlimactic ending Monday, when a legislative committee couldn't muster enough votes to send the politically charged issue to the full Senate for debate. The Republican-led panel took up Democratic-backed bills aimed at preserving the state exchange, kynect, and Medicaid expansion, both created under the federal Affordable Care Act. The measures stalled in the Senate Health and Welfare Committee after efforts to advance them to the Senate floor to allow a fuller debate failed to muster enough support. (Schreiner, 4/11)

Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration is reworking its approach to hiring the staff needed to handle his Medicaid expansion effort, after getting pushback from lawmakers who bristled at adding employees to a state government brimming with budget problems. (Deslatte, 4/16)