What? Still no plan, Rep. Cotton? About 225,000 Arkansans are too poor to qualify for a subsidy to buy health insurance on the exchange, and too "wealthy" to qualify for the state's traditional Medicaid. But because the state expanded, using a "private option" to provide coverage, 155,567 of them now have insurance. "We now know that an overwhelming majority of Arkansans in the program would have likely gone without health insurance had the Legislature not passed the Private Option," said John Selig, director of the Arkansas Department of Human Services.