HJLR Mar/Apr 2019

48 MAR / APR 2019 I  Healthcare Journal of little rock column policy As Washington lurched toward a shutdown last December, it was refreshing to hear former Arkansas Govs. Mike Huckabee and Mike Beebe reminisce about the spirit of bipartisanship in which some major health-related pieces of legislation passed in our state. I was honored to join our 44th and 45th governors, under both of whom I served as state surgeon general, for an onstage discus- sion during theArkansas Center for Health Improvement’s 20th anniversary celebration on December 3, co-hosted by the Clinton School of Public Service. I expected the con- versation to be lively and candid, and my former bosses did not disappoint. “The reason we can name names in all of this stuff is because neither of us are ever gonna run for anything again. We don’t give a darn,” Huckabee said. The two men worked together on a num- ber of issues when Huckabee was governor and Beebe was a state senator. As gover- nors, both had to reach across the aisle to get things done: Huckabee, a Republican, was faced with a Democratic-controlled leg- islature during his entire time in office, and Beebe, a Democrat, saw Republicans gain control of the legislature mid-way through his second term. “You cross party lines if you really are worth your salt,” Beebe said. “Where you have philosophical differences, you stick to your principles and those differences, but you work together for the people.” Both also interacted with Republican and Democratic U.S. presidents. Huckabee said that as governor he found it easier to get help for Arkansas from President Bill Clinton than from his successor, President George W. Bush. “This is a great example of, don’t always believe that the partisan nature of politics is as predictable as you would expect it to be,” Huckabee said. One significant accomplishment that both Huckabee and Beebe were involved in was the creation of the ARKids First program, which addressed the problemof how to pro- vide coverage for children whose families earned too much to be eligible for Medic- aid but not enough to insure their children. Beebe was the chief Senate sponsor of a bill, signed into law by Huckabee in 1997, to es- tablish the landmark program. “It was hard for someone to argue that the people who were working, working hard, that their kids shouldn’t have some access to affordable health care,” Huckabee said. “It was not a left or right issue,” Beebe said. Both men also supported requiring that all of Arkansas’s tobacco settlement pro- ceeds go to programs that improve health. Beebe shepherded a bill to that effect through the Senate during a special session, but a House committee failed to advance it, and the session collapsed. Voters approved the requirement in 2000 in the form of an initiated act, establishing a framework for distributing the funds, that was based on the work of a coalition led by ACHI. “Arkansas became the only state inAmer- ica that designated and devoted 100 percent of its tobacco settlement monies to improve the health care of the citizens,” Huckabee said. “I think it’s one of the most important things that we saw happen.” Reflecting on passage of the Clean In- door Air Act of 2006, Huckabee said, “Of all the health care initiatives, it was one of the things I was personally most proud of us getting done, because it was an incred- ible challenge to get people to believe that it was the right thing to do, to essentially ban smoking in any public place where people came.” Many restaurant owners opposed the measure, but Huckabee said that months after its passage, members of the Arkansas HospitalityAssociation told him that restau- rants were benefiting from lower cleaning bills and faster turnover of tables because customers weren’t lingering after their meals to smoke. “It took a while to get those thank-yous, but it was very much worth it,” Huckabee said. Beebe reminisced about the creation in ACHI 20th AnniversaryEvent: Ex-Governors Recall Health Care Milestones