Governors convene in DC for winter meeting

The Winter meeting of the National Governors Association begins today and culminates with a meeting at the White House on Monday. This gives Lt. Gov. Bill Halter his first opportunity as acting governor while Beebe is out of the state.

Heading the NGA agenda will be discussions of health care issues. As it pertains to Arkansas, our state legislators are hopful that we receive some good news soon on S-CHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) from the federal government soon, and this will be high on the list of issues discussed this weekend. We recently passed a resolution in Arkansas concerning the reauthorization of S-CHIP (SCR4 - read it here).

This is one area where the president and Congress are clearly divided. S-CHIP, which provides subsidized health insurance to families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, technically expires this fall but could run out of money as early as this spring for some dozen states if Congress doesn’t step in. While the president has proposed adding $5 billion to the program, various analysts say states need up to $16 billion more just to keep covering the same number of families. The president also wants to freeze enrollment of adults in S-CHIP, another concern for some governors who want to expand health insurance coverage in their states.

You can listen to Governor Beebe's Friday radio address on heart health and AHEC health care here. Also high on many governors’ lists: use of the National Guard in Iraq, the federal No Child Left Behind education law and a sweeping new mandate to revamp drivers’ licenses.