How Kentucky is Implementing Obamacare
By Theresa Camoriano
At the May meeting of the Louisville 912 group, David Adams said that he believes Kentucky is positioning itself to implement the government-controlled health insurance plan (Obamacare) even if it is struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Kentucky has not passed the enabling legislation for Obamacare, but Governor Beshear is building a health care exchange without the enabling legislation. Accordign to Adams, the only way the federal government can subsidize health insurance under Obamacare is if the states create state-run exchanges. If the states refuse to set up the exchanges, then there will be no subsidies and the project will fail.
Many people are arguing that the states need to set up state-run exchanges in order to maintain a degree of local control, but Adams says that is nonsense. The federal government will have total control.
The state-run exchanges will be nothing more than a web site. There already is a non-state-controlled web site performing that function at eHealthInsurance.com, so we do not need one controlled by the government.
Kentucky already has iCare, which creates a health insurance czar. This began under Governor Ernie Fletcher and has been expanded by Governor Beshear. Forj example, Kentucky has expanded Medicaid to meet the requirements of Obamacare.
The federal government is now throwing money at the states to get them to set up health insurance exchanges. Kentucky has just received $58 million dollars for that purpose, which is the second largest amount of money after New York. Why should it cost so much money to set up a web site to sell health insurance? This is essentially a bribe to get the states to buy into the program.
Adams says that, if you want to stop the implementation of Obamacare in Kentucky, you should contact your elected officials and demand the return of that money to the federal government.
Adams also suggests that you contact your elected officials and push for legislation to allow religious-based health programs, such as Christian Care Medi-share, which would provide an alternative to the government-controlled program. Obamacare provides an express exemption for those types of programs, but they have been declared illegal in Kentucky.
To keep up with David Adams’ commentary, you can go to his Kentucky Progress blog.
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