New Kentucky Governor Faces Reality of Dumping Obamacare Plan
- Bevin has chance to put Republican rhetoric into action.
- Kynect has helped 10 percent of state residents get insurance
Matt Bevin talks with voters at the Fountain Run BBQ Festival while campaigning for the Republican Senate primary on May 17, 2014 in Fountain Run, Kentucky.
Photographer: Win McNamee/Getty ImagesBlair Wilson walked into a storefront at a Louisville mall. An hour later, she walked out with Medicaid coverage for herself and her father, who lost his insurance this year after two strokes.
Kentucky’s Republican governor-elect, Matt Bevin, won this week promising to scrap the state’s Kynect insurance exchange created under President’s Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul while repealing and replacing its Medicaid expansion. Yet Kynect, which Bevin has called part of a “financially ill-advised program,” in two years has enrolled 521,000 people in Medicaid or federally subsidized private plans. Joining is as easy as going to Mall St. Matthews for people such as Wilson, an 18-year-old nursing student who makes $300 a month, and it doesn’t cost tax dollars to run.