Bills aim to save kynect, Medicaid programs

• House Bill 5 would require the state to continue to operate kynect, the site where people can shop for private health insurance.
• House Bill 6 would require the state to continue the Medicaid expansion at its current level.
• Bevin ran on a campaign pledging to dismantle Kentucky's health insurance exchange and promised to scale back the state's Medicaid expansion.

Rep. Darryl Owens, a Louisville Democrat, has filed two bills seeking to block Gov. Matt Bevin's plans to dismantle kynect, the state health exchange, and scale back the state Medicaid program.

Owens said he hopes to get a hearing on his bills in the House, where Democrats hold the majority, though he acknowledged that they likely won't fare well in the Senate, controlled by Republicans.

But he said he decided to file them out of his concern that the changes proposed by Bevin will make it too hard for people to get health coverage and that many will lose it.

"The folks out there, they have no voice, they don't have a lobbyist," he said. "You are going to have a number of folks who are just going to drop off."

House Bill 5 would require the state to continue to operate kynect, the site where people can shop for private health insurance or sign up for Medicaid if they are eligible.

House Bill 6 would require the state to continue the Medicaid expansion at its current level.

Jessica Ditto, spokeswoman for the Bevin administration, said the governor "would welcome an up or down vote on both bills on the House floor as expeditiously as possible." She added House members have not yet had the opportunity to weigh in on either issue.

Bevin ran on a campaign pledging to dismantle Kentucky's nationally recognized health insurance exchange, created by his predecessor, Gov. Steve Beshear, under the federal Affordable Care Act. He also has pledged to scale back the state's expansion of Medicaid under the federal health law that added about 425,000 Kentuckians to the government health plan.

Bevin has called the expansion "unsustainable," a claim repeated recently by Vickie Yates Brown Glisson, his secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

Glisson last week at a hearing of the House human services budget subcommittee said the state Medicaid program is "hemorrhaging" money.

But most of the projected shortfall of about $125 million in the current fiscal year comes from about 60,000 more people added to "traditional" Medicaid who were eligible before the expansion, Medicaid Commissioner Stephen Miller said.

The federal government covers 70 percent of the costs of people in traditional Medicaid, who include the poor, pregnant women, children, the disabled and low-income elderly in nursing homes. For now, the federal government pays 100 percent of the costs of those added under the expansion, which covers anyone up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. That will gradually decrease to 90 percent by 2020.

Owens said he wants to give kynect and the Medicaid expansion a chance to work in Kentucky.

"Health care should not be a privilege for the wealthy," he said. "I believe affordable access to insurance is the right of every Kentuckian."

Owens said he's not convinced by Bevin's claims the state can't afford kynect and expanded Medicaid, pointing to outside studies that showed the Medicaid expansion will add 40,000 jobs and $30 billion to the state's economy through 2021 and will generate a net positive impact of nearly $820 million to state and local governments.

Bevin aide: Kynect's 'day of reckoning' nigh

So far, Bevin has not backed up his claims that such benefits are exaggerated, Owens said.

"We should have more information other than his opinion that those numbers are not correct," Owens said.

Contact reporter Deborah Yetter at (502)582-4228 or at dyetter@courier-journal.com.