In Kentucky, the federal health care exchange created by the Affordable Care Act is called Kynect. Kynect is very popular, but ObamaCare is very unpopular. So it goes.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to rip up ObamaCare “root and branch” and toss it in the mulch pile, but he doesn’t want to do a thing to Kynect because it has already given more than 400,000 Kentuckians health insurance, many for the first time. Of course, since Kynect and ObamaCare are actually two words for the same thing, it isn’t possible to kill one without killing the other.
The Lexington Herald-Leader explains:
Repeal the federal law, which McConnell calls “Obamacare,” and the state exchange would collapse.
Kynect could not survive without the ACA’s insurance reforms, including no longer allowing insurance companies to cancel policies when people get sick or deny them coverage because of pre-existing conditions, as well as the provision ending lifetime limits on benefit payments. (Kentucky tried to enact such reforms in the 1990s and found out we were too small a market to do it alone.)
Kentucky’s exchange also could not survive without the federal funding and tax credits that are helping 300,000 previously uninsured Kentuckians gain access to regular preventive medicine, including colonoscopies, mammograms and birth control without co-pays.
As a result of a law that McConnell wants to repeal, one in 10 of his constituents no longer have to worry that an illness or injury will drive them into personal bankruptcy or a premature grave.
Repealing the federal law would also end the Medicaid expansion that is enabling Kentucky to expand desperately needed drug treatment and mental health services.
Kynect is the Affordable Care Act is Obamacare — even if Kentuckians are confused about which is which.
The Herald-Leader goes on to wonder how average Kentuckians are supposed to understand the Affordable Care Act if Mitch McConnell doesn’t understand (or pretends not to understand) it himself.
The answer to that is pretty easy. If Kentuckians start with the presumption that nothing that Mitch McConnell says about Kynect or ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act is true, they will be much less confused. If they like Kynect, then they like ObamaCare and the Affordable Care Act. If they like it, they should vote out Mitch McConnell and prevent him from removing their benefits “root and branch.”
Your last paragraph nails it. Anything Mitchipoo says about the ACA and health insurance reform is a lie and will be a lie.
In fact, Grimes should basically issue your last paragraph as a press release, and run her campaign accordingly.
Is she a strong campaigner, or lame? I have a hard time believing that Addison M McConnell was EVER a strong campaigner, despite his 5 terms. He is an accomplished and amoral liar and bamboozler, but that is a universal personality characteristic of conservative white males, it seems.
Why isn’t Grimes saying this?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/alison-lundergan-grimes-mitch-mcconnell-kynect-obamacare-kentu
cky
From your link:
Glad to see the campaign manager campaigning anyway.
AD ONE- Billboard everywhere
OBAMACARE=KYNECT
AD TWO:
Voter going into vote.
Voter: I’m going to vote for McConnell.
Lady at the voting table: May I have your Kynect Insurance Card
Confused Voter: Why?
Lady at the voting table: Because you’re voting McConnell, and He’ll take your Kynect Away. Might as well do it now.
Lady takes Kynect Insurance Card and places it in a shredder.
Announcer: If you have a Kynect Insurance Card, Mitch McConnell is going to take it away from you. Might as well cut it up now.
Nice.
I wonder, though, if making the KYNECT=OBAMACARE campaign would just make Kynect less popular.
I mean, these folks are not reacting to policy.
She can run on KYNECT, as she is, and let someone else – superpac, media, faith institutions, whatever, educate the public. She should not sacrifice her campaign to the confusion generated in the past 4 years
They have cut the uninsured by FORTY FUCKING PERCENT in Kentucky.
If you can’t run on that, and RUN ON IT….not some mamby pamby pissant weakassness
but fucking RUN ON IT..
fuck you as a Democratic Candidate.
Certainly folks like Mitch McConnell have been doing their level best to confuse people about the Affordable Care Act. But there’s a reason for that, having to do with a strong desire to keep their phoney-baloney jobs.
The puzzling thing to me is why popular media outlets are content to let McConnell and his ilk confuse people. It sounds like the Herald-Leader has finished with the fair and balanced approach, and good on them. But why do other media outlets persist in reporting on the sowing of confusion as if it were a principled position rather than cynical politicking.
Oh please let Mitch just keep on lying. There are some who will never vote for a Dem…but then Mitch’s lies may become the best voter suppression tactic of the 21st century. If they cannot vote for Mitch, they may not vote at all.
Once Kynect tortures the lie from McConnell’s empty hands, it’s an easy step to layer on every lie he’s told and pound them home to a hometown crowd that will be listening. Finally.
And then McConnell’s lies will walk over and tap Rand Paul on the shoulder.
…it’s the lies, stupid’