Arkansas lawmakers reviewed two rules Wednesday in response to a new law aimed at improving the state’s maternal health care landscape for low-income pregnant women.

The Joint Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee spent nearly an hour discussing Arkansas’ new policy of presumptive Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women, part of the Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies Act that will go into effect in August.

Presumptive eligibility assumes 60 days of Medicaid eligibility and shortens the process of applying for coverage. The policy was among several recommendations to improve the state’s maternal health care landscape that a task force convened by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued in September 2024.

More than half of births in Arkansas are covered by Medicaid, the federal-state heal

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