Mitch McConnell, like
House Republicans has an Obamacare problem. He's still insisting that Obamacare has to be repealed by "pulling it out root and branch," but Kentucky's Kynect, established under Obamacare, just keeps on racking up the successes. Most recently,
analysis by alternative weekly
LEO Weekly shows that Kentuckians enrolled in private insurance plans through the law "are saving more than $200 each month on their insurance premiums through federal tax subsidies made possible by the Affordable Care Act."
Kynect officials say that of the 82,795 Kentuckians who purchased a qualified health plan (QHP) through the state exchange, 74 percent of them received federal subsidies to help pay for their premiums. Of those who received such assistance, their average premium was reduced by 74 percent.
The total cost of the premiums for such individuals under Kynect was also remarkably affordable. While their average premium without factoring in federal tax credits was $335 per month, the average tax credit amounted to $257, leaving these individuals with an average premium cost of $88.40. Under the "silver" plan—the most popular among Kynect consumers—the average premium was reduced 79 percent to just over $65 per month.
Along with those nearly 83,000 Kentuckians who have new health insurance—the vast majority of them with healthy subsidies—nearly 300,000 are on the state's expanded Medicaid program. That's an awful lot of people that would lose their coverage under McConnell's plan for full repeal. And no matter what Mitch
says, Kynect would not survive repeal of the federal law because there wouldn't be any funding left to make insurance affordable for those 483,000 people.
How is Mitch going to convince Kentucky voters that he has their best interests as his top priority when he wants to hurt so many of them?