John Burris: The Big Moment

Last week Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced his plans for the future of healthcare in Arkansas.

In summary, he’ll allow the “Private Option” insurance experiment of premium assistance for the poor to expire in 2016 at the end of the three-year waiver. He’s asked a legislative task force to study and create his own coverage model for 2017 and beyond.

This creates a big moment for our state and its leaders.

Gov. Hutchinson and others have to now decide what that coverage model is. He’s essentially hit the re-set button. I don’t know anyone who thinks that’s a bad thing. The debate we’ve had for the past two years has been tiresome, at times personal, and has eclipsed all other issues. There have been reasonable voices on both sides, but sometimes only the loudest have been heard.

A man (or team) in charge can change all of that. The governor said in his speech that he wanted a plan that built upon the principles of the Private Option but further optimizes state innovation and consumer responsibility.

He’s right to choose this path. The Private Option was never intended to be a permanent solution. There’s a sunset provision in the law for that very reason, a tool that now maximizes the state’s leverage for negotiating even further flexibility.

Entitlement reform can only be accomplished when conservatives engage in the debate, which is what the governor and legislative leaders have chosen to do. They’ve also chosen to try to invent something new.

Inventing is usually hard. There’s an analogy many have used about Henry Ford. It goes that if he had asked people what they wanted, they would have told him faster horses. We got the automobile instead. The point is that people rarely anticipate the way things can change, and usually just build upon what they already know.

Democrats have long been the champions of faster horses in the world of entitlement spending. That’s why in 2013 traditional Medicaid expansion was simply a “no brainer.” Why not just add more people to same broken system?

It’s why in 2015, with everyone talking about small tweaks and changes, Gov. Hutchinson did neither. He simply asked for a little time to further build upon many of the principles of the Private Option, instead of playing small-ball with what we already have.

Some who have opposed the Private Option, such as Sen. Jim Hendren and Rep. Joe Farrer, will play a large role in what comes next. That’s a good thing; the best public policy emerges when varying kinds of thoughts are put into it. You can contrast our process to the manner in which Obamacare became law. There, a single political party passed it and the President has resisted any change he doesn’t want to make. That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.

Arkansas has a chance to show there’s another way, in both how the policy is made and the approaches we take to solve our biggest problems.

In healthcare, the goals should always be maximum innovation power to the state to create coverage options and fully responsible consumers who utilize that coverage. I believe the Private Option was – in football terms – a five yard run in that direction. Others believe it was a fumble. In many ways that debate doesn’t matter any more.

Our leaders have a chance to put new and bolder ideas onto paper (in the form of waivers), and fully transform our entire healthcare system. So that’s the big moment we find ourselves in, both for our state and the future of health care reform.

I was told once that great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people. To be successful, the discussion can’t be about the event that the Private Option was or about the personalities on either side of an old debate.

The task force needs to be filled with great minds, not small ones. That’s the only way we can take full advantage of the moment.

Faster horses are no longer good enough.