Beshear: Ky. care website vetted
Democratic governor discusses Clintons and Obamacare
Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, talks about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s tough re-election race and lessons of the Affordable Care Act. Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Why has the Kentucky health care website worked when the federal one did not?
A: We’ve got some of the worst health statistics in the country. In order to really make a change, you had to have some kind of transformational tool, and the Affordable Care Act came along and gave me that tool. We grabbed it. We ran with it. We’ve got 640,000 uninsured Kentuckians. We have so far since Oct. 1 signed up over 244,000 people. I think we will probably hit about 300,000 at March 31. People are just coming out of the woodwork on this.
What we did is we very quietly took all of the planning money that the federal government offered. We sat our vendors down with our Medicaid people and the folks that run the public health system in Kentucky. We worked through what we needed to do. We made it simple. We didn’t put a lot of bells and whistles on our website. We tested and then we tested and then we tested again to make sure that it was going to work and then of course kept our fingers crossed when Oct. 1 came. And it worked.
Out of 640,000 people, about 308,000 will qualify for expanded Medicaid. The other 332,000, about 85-90% of them are going to qualify for a premium subsidy of some kind. In a generation, it’s going to make a huge difference in the commonwealth.
Q: That sounds very sensible — you didn’t put a lot of bells and whistles on the website, you tested and tested. Why didn’t the federal government do that?
A: In their defense, they had a much bigger audience than we did. ... I don’t think they expected so many states to refuse to do their own exchanges.
But having said that, I mean, they messed up. They know it. We know it. But the good thing about it is ... it is working now.
Q: You call your program kynect. Would it have been as successful if it had President Obama’s name attached to it?
A: Well, there was a reason we called it kynect.
The summer before Oct. 1, when we were leading up to the opening of our exchange, we had a booth at our state fair. ... One fellow came up, and we went through it with him, and he said: “This is great. This is a lot better than that Obamacare.”
Q: Some Democrats running in red states are concerned this will be a terrible issue for them in November.
A: I really think that by next November, it will either be basically a neutral issue that people aren’t going to decide who they’re going to vote for on the basis of, or really a positive issue. ... You watch it: In the end, it’s going to be a plus instead of a minus.
Q: Bill Clinton will be campaigning in Kentucky Tuesday for Democratic Senate contender Alison Lundergan Grimes, his first campaign appearance of 2014. Sen. Rand Paul has attacked him, calling him a sexual predator. Has that hurt Clinton’s standing?
A: Not at all. ... He is greatly admired there, as is his wife, Hillary, both when she was first lady and as a senator and then as secretary of State. If she ends up running for president, I think she’ll have the possibility of carrying Kentucky in 2016. Having President Clinton come in there is a big plus for Alison Grimes. I’m glad he’s doing it because we’ve got a real shot at winning that race.