Health News
Gov. Steve Beshear says states that have not expanded the Medicaid program under the federal health-reform law, as he did, will do so in the next few years because their voters will demand it.
?I believe the pressure will be so great over the next three or four or five years, on the states that haven?t gone in this direction, that they will end up just where Kentucky is,? Beshear told Alexander Burns of Politico, in the governor's latest appearance in a national publication.
State Senate Republican Floor Leader Damon Thayer, "a leading Obamacare critic in the state, said Democrats would pay a price for Beshear?s decision to 'channel his inner liberal Democrat with no election ever facing him again in the future'," Burns writes, quoting Thayer: ?While it appears that Kentucky has done a competent job implementing a website, it?s still a bad policy. . . . The people of Kentucky don?t like the fact that he has unilaterally implemented Obamacare without legislative approval, and they don?t like Obamcare.? (Read more)
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Passport Health Plan, which manages Medicaid care for hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians, gave $25,000 this year to the Democratic Governors Association, "which already this year has given $600,000 to a Democratic super PAC supporting the election of...
- Beshear Writes Reply To A Virginia Newspaper, Pushing Medicaid Expansion Like He Implemented In Kentucky
Gov. Steve Beshear, trying to help a fellow Democratic governor who is trying to expand Medicaid, has written a response to an editorial in which a Virginia largest state-capital newspaper opposed the move. "Our success undercuts your whole...
- Beshear Issues Executive Order Funding Insurance Exchange With Fees On Insurers, Originally Used To Fund High-risk Pool
Gov. Steve Beshear has filed another executive order to continue the state health-insurance exchange he created under federal health reform, "again sidestepping state lawmakers who have blasted Beshear for moving forward without their approval," Matt...
- Republicans Wait For Elections And Chance To Roll Back Medicaid Expansion; Few Kentucky Democrats Defend Obamacare
Though thousands of their constituents have benefited from it, Republican state legislators say they are planning to roll back Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear's expansion of Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act if they take...
- Beshear Says He Will Decide In Four To Five Weeks, Or July 1 At The Latest, Whether Or Not To Expand Medicaid
By Al Cross Kentucky Health News This story has been updated. Gov. Steve Beshear said Monday that he will decide within the next four to five weeks, or maybe by July 1, whether to expand the Medicaid program under federal health-care reform. Beshear,...
Health News
Beshear says other governors will follow his lead on Medicaid
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| Associated Press file photo |
?I believe the pressure will be so great over the next three or four or five years, on the states that haven?t gone in this direction, that they will end up just where Kentucky is,? Beshear told Alexander Burns of Politico, in the governor's latest appearance in a national publication.
Burns writes, "It?s precisely the message national Democrats are aching to hear, even ? or perhaps especially ? from a source as unexpected as a pro-gun, pro-coal, red-state governor who once endorsed using state tax incentives to build a creationist theme park."
The story, headlined "Kentucky's unlikely health care heartthrob," focuses on Beshear's high national profile stemming from his expansion of Medicaid to people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line and the state's successful rollout of a website that is enrolling about 1,000 people a day in Medicaid or private insurance -- unlike the federal government's site, which seems to be getting in order after a disastrous rollout that made many Democrats nervous. He is the only Southern governor to take both steps.
"For anxious national Democrats who have pined for a white knight in the health-care reform debate, Steve Beshear is starting to look like the one they?ve been waiting for ? implausible as that development may be," Burns writes. "Amid a torrent of negative national headlines about the Affordable Care Act, the 69-year-old Kentucky governor ? a canny Southern operator who?s spent his career at arm?s length from the [national] Democratic base ? has charged out of Frankfort as a kind of ambassador-by-default for the controversial law."
Burns says the verdicts on the state and national programs are "far from decided, but Beshear says his mind is entirely made up on both the merits and the politics of health care. From his perspective, voters? opposition to the ACA is driven largely by a sense of anxiety about how the program may change their lives. If they find a year from now that the law has left their personal care unchanged, or even improved it, public opinion could shift quickly."
- Medicaid Manager Passport Gives $25,000 To Democratic Group That Has Given Heavily To Committee Backing Conway For Governor
Passport Health Plan, which manages Medicaid care for hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians, gave $25,000 this year to the Democratic Governors Association, "which already this year has given $600,000 to a Democratic super PAC supporting the election of...
- Beshear Writes Reply To A Virginia Newspaper, Pushing Medicaid Expansion Like He Implemented In Kentucky
Gov. Steve Beshear, trying to help a fellow Democratic governor who is trying to expand Medicaid, has written a response to an editorial in which a Virginia largest state-capital newspaper opposed the move. "Our success undercuts your whole...
- Beshear Issues Executive Order Funding Insurance Exchange With Fees On Insurers, Originally Used To Fund High-risk Pool
Gov. Steve Beshear has filed another executive order to continue the state health-insurance exchange he created under federal health reform, "again sidestepping state lawmakers who have blasted Beshear for moving forward without their approval," Matt...
- Republicans Wait For Elections And Chance To Roll Back Medicaid Expansion; Few Kentucky Democrats Defend Obamacare
Though thousands of their constituents have benefited from it, Republican state legislators say they are planning to roll back Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear's expansion of Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act if they take...
- Beshear Says He Will Decide In Four To Five Weeks, Or July 1 At The Latest, Whether Or Not To Expand Medicaid
By Al Cross Kentucky Health News This story has been updated. Gov. Steve Beshear said Monday that he will decide within the next four to five weeks, or maybe by July 1, whether to expand the Medicaid program under federal health-care reform. Beshear,...