Hi, I’m Andreah Gratol, I’m Sarah Laiche, and I’m Aiden Dixon. This is the Hill Room, a student led podcast meant to bridge the gap between you and all the great student media outlets across campus. With school starting back up, we’ve had a big week for media organizations to get out there and make connections with students. But before we get into some of the events going on around campus, we’re going to tell y’all a little bit about ourselves. Yeah. So we are, as you can imagine, all journalism majors, all multimedia journalism majors, all seniors. We’re all in our last year. Uh, you know, kind of rounding out that last hurrah here, uh, at, uh, on the hill. Andreah. Especially very eventful summer for you. You were across the pond? Yes, I was. I was in Rome, Italy. I had an internship for eight weeks. It was amazing. I got to, luckily, do a radio production, radio station, podcast internship. I worked with Radio Bullets. Um, it was all remote, so that was awesome. I got to really enjoy myself. Kind of got to see all the things there are to see in Rome. It was really interesting to kind of like, really dig deeper and more and learn more about the Italian culture itself and kind of like opening my own mind a little bit to kind of like the stereotypes that are kind of placed on the Italian culture. Honestly, it was such an amazing experience and it kind of gave me a sneak peek on what I kind of want my future to look like as a journalist, and being able to kind of experience other cultures and write about it in a different way. Yeah, it sounds, uh, riveting. Um, and Sarah, I mean, talk about riveting. Yeah, I had quite a summer. Um, no, I went home for the summer. I’m originally from Louisiana. My parents live in a town called Morganza, so that I believe has a population of about three hundred people, if that gives you any idea. Um, and it’s, I mean, it’s quite charming. I love Morganza, it’s quite hot. Um, like Andreah, I ate a lot of good food. I’m sure it was very different from the Italian food she ate. I ate a lot of Cajun, um, Louisiana classics. I took a couple classes for journalism. And I really just like soaked up time with my family and with my mom and my brother and my dad, my grandma. I haven’t been home long term since I left, truly. So, it’s been about three years since I was home for more than a couple weeks. Yeah. So it was, it was really nice. It was very pleasant. And, other than, you know, the slew of car accidents that I got into. Happens to us all. Yeah, I was in a couple accidents. I had a terrible luck this summer with cars in general. I’ve got a little bit of, like, residual PTSD driving anywhere. But, you know, nobody was hurt. And that’s really all that matters. We had - all of us have insurance. So that’s, you know, that’s a plus. Yeah. So, it wasn’t too high stakes, but it was stressful. It was a stressful summer for sure. So, Aiden, we went quite far. You actually stayed right here. Yeah. So, uh, I was at KUAF Public Radio, and I got to do some really interesting stories about women’s and maternal health, through them, through the reporting internship I had there. Yeah, I worked, I worked with a lot of really interesting people. And I got to do a lot of like hands on journalism. Like I really felt like a, you know, nose to the ground reporter sometimes where, you know, I’m contacting different people and I’m setting up interviews. I mean, I’m describing regular journalism, but it was really, it was awesome doing it in a professional environment. Yeah. And like as a student, you’re used to being in that student kind of position. It’s, it’s really cool to feel like a professional. No, like, I mean, yeah, to be in a, you know, a, a newsroom, like for all intents and purposes, like a, a place where people are doing journalism, doing it there. Um, and, and being around people who are doing it is, I think it’s really, it was really awesome and I can’t recommend it enough. We’re all actually alum, alumni, alumnus? Yes. Um, so yeah, I mean, we all know, uh, that it provides a really, really cool experience. So interning there was, uh, was awesome. Yeah. Thank you, Matthew Moore. Yes. Thank you. He is our connecting tissue. So, we all interned at some point, um, through Matthew at KUAF, um, did stories. I actually had the same position that Aidan had. Um, and I can definitely attest. It’s really cool to just be in that professional environment. And, actually, we kind of are almost like freelance interns where, like, you would get paid for the stories that you submitted to KUAF. So, it was awesome to get recognized and get paid for your work. But you did that right after I was done. Yeah. So, Andreah did not get… they implemented that sort of whenever Andreah left. But, um, you know. Next up, we’re actually going to hear a KUAF story that Aiden did, um, about an issue concerning many Arkansans as we start to see changes to Medicaid benefits. So, Aiden, can you explain your experience telling this story? What was the most compelling part of your research or your interview process? And what was it like telling this story? So the catalyst was like this email that just came across, you know, my proverbial desk. Um, and it basically stated that the Arkansas Medicaid expansion program. ARHOME, uh, was being verbally denied, like the federal government had verbally denied the renewal of our Medicaid expansion, which covers 200,000-plus Arkansans. You know, there is a population of adults in Arkansas that are covered by this Medicaid program. So, you know, the stakes are realized in how many people this could affect. That is that is quite a lot of people. That doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s going to happen though, right? No. Yeah. That was something that I talked to, uh, Camille Richoux about. Um, she was who I spoke to at the, uh, Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, um, for the story. And she made sure to emphasize that this does not mean that two hundred thousand Arkansans are losing their health care. You know, like that was the big thing for me. I saw that and I was immediately what came to my mind is, you know, these people are going to be without coverage like that, that this expansion specifically targets a population that, Um, that needs that, that help that, that, um, health care cost help. So, what would happen to these people that don’t quite qualify for, for, you know, standard Medicaid, but are, uh, other what, but would otherwise be in the expansion population. So, um, that was something I talked to her about, and she made sure to clarify that, you know, the state is going to work as hard as it can leading up to the deadline to make sure that there is something in place for these people. Arkansas’s Medicaid expansion program, called ARHOME, operates a little differently than standard Medicaid. ARHOME directs Medicaid dollars into privately insuring the beneficiaries of the program. We were actually the first state in the nation to use this private option. Camille Richoux, the health policy director at Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, says Arkansas developed this novel approach as an alternative to traditional Medicaid. “We were trying to find a solution that would kind of be bipartisan and work and make sure that we expanded. And so we’ve had this for more than 10 years now, and it has been enormously beneficial. So we sort of purchase plans on the marketplace for our Medicaid expansion population. So originally it was called the private option and then Arkansas Works and now ARHOME, but they’re all the same thing. They’re still providing insurance, just in a different way.” This program, by all accounts, has been hugely beneficial for large swaths of Arkansans. It’s this exact reason why Richoux stresses that the stakes are so high. “Arkansas cut its uninsurance rate among adults nearly in half from 2013 to 2014. Hospitals saw 55% drop in uncompensated care costs. And those are rippling effects around the community. And we also get a really good deal for our Medicaid expansion. And the federal government pays 90% of the cost of this program. And we pick up the other 10%. So those federal dollars flow into hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, medical practices around the state. They support jobs. They strengthen local economies. And then also Arkansas families get the health care that they need to stay healthy, to care for their families, to work to thrive. So, everybody is impacted by what happens with our Medicaid expansion.” We reached out to the Arkansas Department of Human Services for comment or a statement on the status of Medicaid expansion in Arkansas. They provided a copy of the letter they sent to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services asking for the two-year extension, but did not provide further comment or statement. So, coming back to campus, we wanted to talk a little bit about some of the stuff going on around campus when it comes to student media outreach. Yeah, I mean, it’s been an important time for networking as students are coming in. The university has been making it easier for new and returning students to get involved. So, we, all three of us, we went to, um, the Pick One student involvement fair, which was very lively, very exciting. And that was the Thursday before classes even started. Yeah. So that was um, hosted in the student union. So, there was quite a lot of traffic; people coming through. Um, you know, just looking, it wasn’t, it wasn’t very student media specific, but student media did have a table there for, you know, interested individuals to sign up, write down their emails and get more information. We showed up. This is like our first event we attended as a group. We showed up empty-handed, as you know, audio reporters do. We showed up with a microphone and that was it. Um, but, you know, we tal
