Popular Health Exchange In Jeopardy After Surprise Republican Win

More than 500,000 people have gotten health insurance in Kentucky through the state’s health care exchange, Kynect, and through expanded Medicaid. Kentucky has seen the second-steepest drop in uninsured of any state.

Supporters of the health care law point to it as one of the success stories, but the man who very well could become the state’s next governor is vowing to “dismantle” Kynect and cancel the Medicaid expansion.

i

Kentucky Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin addresses supporters in Louisville, Ky., Tuesday. He leads the GOP primary by 83 votes.

Dylan Lovan/AP

“We will have a very spirited discussion as it relates to health care in our state. Trust me on that,” vowed Republican Matt Bevin, the surprising apparent winner of the contentious GOP gubernatorial primary. The Tea Party-backed Bevin finished just 83 votes ahead of James Comer, the state’s agriculture commissioner, out of more than 200,000 votes.

(There will be a recanvass next week, matching numbers recorded at polling locations to totals sent to the state, but with votes counted electronically in the state, it is unlikely much will change in the vote total.)

“Obamacare’s been very good to the state,” said Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky.

But President Obama is very unpopular in the state and anything associated with him is, too. Kentuckians and Bevin are stressing the “first three syllables instead of the last one” in Obamacare, Cross said.

It is the latest example of the problems Obama’s signature legislation has faced at the state level, where most governors and legislatures are in Republican hands. The Affordable Care Act, often called “Obamacare,” can be viewed very differently based on the name.

In 2013, Hart Research and Public Opinion Strategies, the bipartisan pollsters who conduct the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, tested that in 2013 for CNBC. The poll asked separately about feelings toward “Obamacare” and the “Affordable Care Act.” There was almost a 10-point difference in how much more negatively people felt toward “Obamacare,” and almost three times as many did not know the “Affordable Care Act.”

Source: http://ift.tt/1K1XwGV

from health IT caucus http://ift.tt/1ElNlIf
via IFTTT