Talk Business and Politics and Hendrix College have a new poll out about Arkansas’s feelings about the state’s so-called “private option” version of the Medicaid expansion enabled and financed by the federal legislation known as Obamacare.

Bottom line: People are cool with it as long as it isn’t described as Obamacare.

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The numbers:

Should the legislature approve the private option? Yes, 46; No, 32; Don’t know, 22

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But if the question mentions that it is a component of Obamacare? Yes, 39; No, 42; Don’t know, 19.

If the question is the private option, with information that it helped more than 200,000 low-income people and hospital budgets? Yes, 49; No, 29; Don’t know, 22.

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The poll doesn’t tell the story very well though. In numerous November elections, Republicans chanting Obamacare ran against politicians who gamely tried to defend their votes by citing advantages to poor people, hospitals and society at large. Obama trumped every time.

The Hutchinson administration has taken the branding a step further. Though it has passed extension of the private option version of Obamacare through 2017, it has proclaimed AsaCare legislation the end of the private option. 

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