LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — President Barack Obama's health care overhaul has never been popular in Arkansas, a state where even most Democrats regard the law as politically toxic.
But with a quarter of the state's working-age population uninsured, the Arkansas governor wants to use the law to widen government-funded coverage to thousands of additional families. And he's relying on the move to help prevent a Republican takeover of the state Legislature for the first time since Reconstruction.
Gov. Mike Beebe is the first Southern governor to back the law's expansion of Medicaid. He once said he would have voted against the law if he were in Congress.
Beebe now says the Medicaid expansion will help people who are "working their tails off" but don't have insurance.
