For whatever reason, Kentuckians, who have no use for President Obama, decided to elect a Democrat as their governor in 2007 and then reelected him in 2011. This is the reason that Kentucky is the
only state in the South that it both expanding Medicaid and opening and operating its own health insurance exchange.
Governor Steve Beshear wants his political opponents to “Get over it.” After noting that Kentucky ranks near the bottom in nearly every health index, he makes the following observations:
The Affordable Care Act will address these weaknesses.
Some 308,000 of Kentucky’s uninsured — mostly the working poor — will be covered when we increase Medicaid eligibility guidelines to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Urban Studies Institute at the University of Louisville concluded that expanding Medicaid would inject $15.6 billion into Kentucky’s economy over the next eight years, create almost 17,000 new jobs, have an $802.4 million positive budget impact (by transferring certain expenditures from the state to the federal government, among other things), protect hospitals from cuts in indigent care funding and shield businesses from up to $48 million in annual penalties.
In short, we couldn’t afford not to do it.
The other 332,000 uninsured Kentuckians will be able to access affordable coverage — most with a discount — through the Health Benefit Exchange, the online insurance marketplace we named Kynect: Kentucky’s Healthcare Connection.
Regardless of what Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul think they are doing in Washington DC, Kentucky is moving forward. It’s population may not have the country’s highest educational attainment, but they are smart enough to figure out that ObamaCare is improving their lives and helping their state’s economy.
Someday soon, the freak show in Congress will end. But ObamaCare is forever.
