Rep. Lee Johnson, R-Greenwood, is a physician and a policy maker, which makes his opinion worth weighing. He’s also vice-chair of the House Insurance Committee and a member of the House Public Health panel in the Arkansas legislature.
Johnson, a guest on this week’s Talk Business & Politics, said he believes there needs to be more transparency in how health insurance premiums are set. Arkansas is eyeing significant double-digit premium increases next year, as much as 22% on average. Insurance companies have said more utilization, rising costs, and less funding from the federal government are factors causing the spikes.
“I don’t know that I know exactly, right? I mean, I think that’s part of the problem of the issue,” Johnson said as to why insurance premiums are rising.
“I think we need to understand better how those calculations are made. We say things like, ‘we know the costs of healthcare are rising.’ Well, where are they rising and what is constituting those cost increases? They’ll say more people are accessing the system. Where are those people accessing the system and how? I think having more transparency so that we can all understand with clarity – both the consumers, providers, and then employers who are paying a lot of these premiums – so that they can understand where is the math,” said Johnson.
“We want to have healthy insurance companies, health insurance companies in Arkansas. We need them to be viable, but we need to understand with clarity when they’re asking for these extraordinary premium increases that the math actually works,” he added. “Whatever we can do as state policy makers to create more transparency for consumers, employers, for state government officials, I think all of this is an important component of trying to put fair controls on premium increases.”
Arkansas has gotten guidance from the federal government before the shutdown went into effect regarding major funding for rural health care. Congress and President Trump made major cuts earlier this year to Medicaid funding for states, but they also set up a new pot of money for rural health care in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB).
Johnson will be heavily-involved in Arkansas’ efforts to plan for this funding, which will be significant.
“The One Big Beautiful Bill set aside $50 billion – with a ‘B’ – for rural health transformation to go back to states,” he said. “They’re wanting to push that money out really fast. They’d like some of that money to be out by the first of the year. So the application process is underway. All of that is still a work in progress.”
“I applaud the governor for putting out a press release to seek ideas around how to find ways in Arkansas that are unique to us to help improve access to rural healthcare in our state. But of that $50 billion, $25 billion is going to be allotted equally among every state that has an accepted application. So for Arkansas, that could mean as much as $500 million allotted over five years,” said Johnson.
“So $100 million a year, $500 million over five years. There’s an additional $25 billion that’s available on a competitive basis based on certain demographics that your state has that are concrete,” he added.
Johnson said his focus will center around workforce and medical residency slots. He also sees a big role for the state to capitalize on telehealth.
“Leveraging telehealth is an important thing. We have a real opportunity in our state with the increasing broadband access to leverage telehealth in a different way to rural hospitals. Rural hospitals need to be able to keep as many patients as they can in their facilities. Sometimes the limitation to that is lack of access to specialties, and that’s something that I think we can solve through telehealth,” he said.
You can watch Rep. Johnson’s full interview in the video below.