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After two terms in office, former Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear has a fight on his hands to convince first-year Republican Gov. Matt Bevin to halt a rollback of the state’s health insurance exchange and transition expanded Medicaid recipients to the federal government. If Bevin is successful in transitioning services, Kentucky would be the first state in the nation to shut down a working state exchange. Beshear has created a non-profit group, Save Kentucky Healthcare, to oppose changes to the healthcare system he put in place during his tenure. Kentucky’s exchange was heralded as a national success under the Affordable Care...

FRANKFORT – Kynect, the portal to Kentucky’s health insurance exchange, was described as too expensive and not sustainable by Kentucky Medicaid Commissioner Stephen Miller and Vicki Yates Brown Glisson, Secretary, Cabinet for Health and Family Services. Glisson told members of the House Budget Subcommittee on Human Resources on Tuesday that since the federal money used to support Kynect is beginning to go away, it is fast becoming cost prohibitive to keep what she calls “the website, or portal” intact. “The day of reckoning has come, and we’re going to have to pay the bills,” Glisson said. Glisson told legislators that...

Gov. Steve Beshear gave a forceful defense of federal health programs he enacted during his final term in office, urging Gov.-elect Matt Bevin, who campaigned aggressively on scrapping the state-based exchange kynect and altering expanded Medicaid, to reconsider his position on Friday. Beshear mentioned Bevin by name repeatedly during a Capitol news conference highlighting recent health progress in the state, pointing to statistics showing increased health coverage and economic activities in his appeal to the Republican. “During election season the political rhetoric tends to be strong and the promises bold,” said Beshear, a Democrat. “But the fun and games are...

Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway says he hopes the next two gubernatorial debates feature questions on the Affordable Care Act, but he will not accept his opponent’s invitation for a forum focused solely on the topic. Republican Matt Bevin challenged Conway to debate the federal health law on Tuesday, saying “Kentuckians deserve to know how each of us would handle the very real and costly flaws of Obamacare.” Bevin’s invitation came days after officials with Kentucky Health Cooperative, a co-op created under the Affordable Care Act that operated in all 120 counties, announced the non-profit insurer would not offer health...

Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin issued the following statement regarding the closure of Kentucky Health Cooperative, Inc. "This financial debacle is a direct result of Obamacare, which Governor Beshear was too quick to embrace. Even though it is a disaster for Kentucky taxpayers, Jack Conway still says he would have been proud to vote for Obamacare," said Bevin. "It is the job of the attorney general to watch out for Kentucky consumers. Where has Jack Conway been in investigating this catastrophic co-op? Once again, Jack is playing political games instead of doing his job. The tragic result is that 51,000...

Kentucky’s nonprofit health insurer set up under ObamaCare is shutting down because of financial problems, the latest in a string of closures for the nonprofit plans around the country. Kentucky Health Cooperative, a nonprofit insurer known as a co-op, explained that it could not stay financially afloat after learning of a low payment from an ObamaCare program called “risk corridors.” That program was intended to protect insurers from heavy losses in the early years of the health law by taking money from better-performing insurers and giving it to worse-performing ones. However, the Obama administration announced on Oct. 1 that the...

FRANKFORT — The largest private provider of health insurance policies on Kynect, Kentucky's health insurance exchange, is going out of business. The Louisville-based Kentucky Health Cooperative Inc. announced Friday that it will end current memberships on Dec. 31 and will not add new members because of financial problems. It will not offer health insurance plans on Kynect when open enrollment for 2016 coverage starts on Nov. 1. The cooperative has about 51,000 members in all 120 Kentucky counties. ... Jonathan Gold, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in an email that the federal government...

The Kentucky Department of Insurance recently approved insurers’ requests for rate hikes. And all but one of the 13 insurers selling individual and small-group plans in the state are raising rates. The approved increases, which are averages among the plans each insurer offers in Kentucky, are nearly identical to insurance company requests made to the state’s Department of Insurance in June. Most are between 5 and 15 percent. The highest increase, by far, comes from the carrier designed to provide the most affordable plans. The Kentucky Health Co-Operative, a nonprofit governed by its members, will see a 25.1 percent rate...

Health insurance costs will probably jump by 10 percent or more next year for many Kentuckians buying coverage through Kynect, the state-run insurance exchange created under the federal Affordable Care Act. The five providers that are returning to Kynect have requested average rate changes for 2016 that range from a decrease of 9.28 percent (WellCare Health Plans of Kentucky) to an increase of 25.1 percent (Kentucky Health Cooperative). Two other companies offering insurance plans in the private marketplace that comply with requirements of the health law requested rate increases of 9.93 percent and 11.5 percent. ... Kentucky is one of...