Talk Business & Politics Daily: The ASU answers, plus Cotton on health care edition

In Tuesday’s Talk Business & Politics Daily digital newscast, Arkansas State University system president Dr. Charles “Chuck” Welch answers questions tied to a new osteopathic medicine school, Dr. Tim Hudson’s controversial resignation and the state’s efforts to alter its higher education formula.

Also, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., discusses what it really means to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. We also dive into the latest Arkansas Home Sales Report.

ASU AGENDA
Arkansas State University launched its new osteopathic medicine school on Monday. Welch said he wasn’t surprised that ASU was able to launch the medical school so quickly.

The first class has 120 students, including 70 from Arkansas. “… Those are going to be future physicians, hopefully staying in the Delta region and serving that region, it made a lot the hard work in a very short period of time paid off very quickly,” Welch said.

He also added that the state’s new funding formula for higher education, which should be finalized during the 2017 legislative session, will do a better job of producing more solid student outcomes. The new formula will reward schools for graduation rates versus enrollment.

“I am not sure there is another state entity that is judged on their performance,” Welch said. “It’s something that we’re not scared of, it’s something we want to work very hard on, and we feel like the only way we are going to get Arkansas to where we need it to be is by investing in our students.”

Welch also addressed the recent controversy involving the resignation of Dr. Tim Hudson, former ASU Jonesboro chancellor. An internal audit revealed that Hudson used his influence in effort to hire his wife, gain financial assistance for a relative, and had an undisclosed conflict of interest with a company whose board he once served.

When asked if this was a systemic issue or an instance of a “rogue operator,” Welch said he felt it was the latter.

“I don’t think we have uncovered anything that would suggest there was a systemic problem. Obviously, he made some unfortunate decisions and decisions that we had to act on very quickly. It appears that no money is missing from the university, but rather he perhaps used his position for to try to secure some personal gain and didn’t dot his I’s and cross his T’s like he should have on some other things as well,” Welch said. “Our internal audit system worked perfectly. From the the first time that we were informed there could be a problem by an anonymous tipster, our system went to work.”

Welch said that new protocols will come out of the audit findings and resulting investigation. He also said the incident with Dr. Hudson won’t derail ASU’s plans to open its Queretaro, Mexico campus next spring.

“I visited last week with our Mexican partners and the first thing they communicated to me was this was an agreement between two entities not between two individuals,” Welch said. “And so there is going to be some learning curve, we are going to have to get some folks more up to speed in some the areas where perhaps Dr. Hudson took the largest role, but we are committed to doing that.”

COTTON ON ‘REPEAL AND REPLACE’
Sen. Tom Cotton – and many Congressional Republicans – have long called to “repeal and replace” Obamacare. With the announcement last week that Aetna health insurance will exit several state exchanges next year, Cotton has called for renewed repeal efforts of the Affordable Care Act.

Cotton has introduced a short-term fix for penalties of those seeing large increases in health insurance costs who may choose to lose their insurance and pay a tax penalty.

“I have introduced legislation that would block any family from having to pay that penalty if their insurance or the average cost of insurance in their state has increased by more than 10%. That’s not a long-term fix, but is a short-term fix to make sure that families who have suffered the problem of losing their health insurance because Obamacare made it too expensive from having to pay a penalty because of what Obamacare did to them,” he said.

Cotton and Talk Business & Politics host Roby Brock discussed what a long-term fix might mean:

Brock: So what is a long-term solution because I have heard the ‘repeal and replace’ argument for years. There has been the effort to repeal it – it got to the president’s desk, but it was vetoed, I believe and so I still haven’t seen legislation to replace it yet. A lot of talk but no legislation.

Cotton: Too often in Washington in the health care debate, and this was true of Obamacare in 2009 and 2010, cost and access are put in opposition to each other. To me, cost means access.

If you can make health insurance affordable, you don’t have to force people to buy it. You don’t have to put mandates on people, you don’t have to penalize them for not having it. People want health insurance. They want to make sure that they get covered and especially that their children get covered. In the long term, we have to use the same principles of market-based competition that you see in the car insurance market or the home insurance market or any other market to encourage more competition to allow patients and to allow families to make the choices that are right for them given their circumstances in life, given how much they can afford to pay for health insurance, given the likelihood that they are going to have health problems. That is what we are going to have to do in the long term.

Brock: When are you going to introduce a bill to make that happen?

Cotton: I am right now focused on the most immediate problems with Obamacare. It’s going to be hard to repeal Obamacare as long as the namesake of the legislation remains president. We have known that for the last year and a half. As you say, we passed an Obamacare repeal bill earlier this year and the president vetoed it. But hopefully in a new president in a new presidency with a new Congress we can repeal Obamacare and we can replace it with health insurance reform that works for all Americans.

Brock: What would be wrong with hanging out the ideas or a piece of legislation that says this is what we would change it to? That would make it pretty clear and obvious for a lot of folks to say, ‘I could get behind that, I could support that.’ If what you are saying is true.

Cotton: And a lot of those ideas I have already purposed and a lot of my colleagues in the Congress have proposed.

Brock: But I can’t find a bill for that though I am looking for the piece of legislation.

Cotton: Well, it’s one thing to say that you are going to write an entire bill when you know that bill is not going to pass, but you know to lay out the general principles.

Brock: That happens all the time in Congress…

Cotton: But on something as, I mean, health care is a central question of our nation. It’s not just a question for our families, it’s a question of our budget deficits. If you look at what state government and federal government spends an increasing portion of its money on its healthcare programs – whether it’s Medicare, Medicaid, veteran’s healthcare and so forth. If we get health care reform correct, it’s not just good for our families, but it’s good for our taxpayers. I am open to lots of different ideas. There are some basic principles that I would like to see implemented though and those principles revolve around giving individuals more choice and therefore more control over their health insurance. I think it will lower prices for everyone, which means it’s going to increase access for everyone.

Brock: I want you to be back on the show when you introduce the legislation. You promise me that I will get that first?

Watch Cotton’s full interview below as well as Dr. Welch’s discussion of ASU. Also, catch top stories of the day and a rundown of the latest Arkansas Home Sales Report in the video below.