Kentucky’s newly elected governor, Republican Matt Bevin, appears to be keeping his word on one of his key electoral platforms: dismantling the state’s health insurance marketplace, Kynect.
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More than 500,000 people have gotten health insurance through Kynect.
Some are anxious that Bevin’s move to shut down kynect could have drastic effects for the state.
But ObamaCare supporters point to Kentucky as a success story in reducing the uninsured rate given the efforts of the previous governor, Democrat Steve Beshear.
“A majority of Kentuckians are paying a 1 percent assessment on their own premiums to support kynect operations which they do not use”, Ditto said.
Jason Bailey, executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, called the decision to end Kynect a “big step backward”, according to WFPL. Nor will it affect anyone who signed up for Medicaid through Kynect.
Bevin, a Republican, has said his goal is to complete the transition of the state’s system, known as “kynect”, by the end of 2016 to the federal system, the Louisville newspaper said. It was created to become self-sufficient in 2015, financed by a 1 percent fee on all insurance plans sold in Kentucky, money previously used to finance Kentucky Access, an insurance pool for people who had been denied coverage largely because of high-cost health conditions.
People would continue to enroll in Medicaid through the state.
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“I’m hoping we will be a player in that game, and get certified on the federal exchange and offer case management to our current clients”, she says.
