AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley
While the rest of the Republicans are running away with breakneck speed from their “repeal Obamacare” nonsense, Mitch McConnell is slowly moseying along. Apparently, he didn’t get the memo that Obamacare is a hugely successful law and that millions of Americans are presently benefiting from it.
Mitch McConnell is running for the Senate again, the man has been there like, 100 years or so, but he is running again by telling the voters of Kentucky that he is still going to repeal Obamacare. You see, Kentuckians loathe Obamacare, so this repeal nonsense promised to be an easy win for McConnell. But there is only problem for Mitch – Kentucky residents loves Obamacare… sorry, they hate Obamacare but they love Kynect!
Kynect is what Obamacare is called in Kentucky!
When asked if he is going to dismantle Kynect, Mitch showed physical pain. His face said it all. His very being showed what is meant by the phrase, caught like a deer in headlights. You could see the wheels in his head turning, trying to figure out who was asking the question and why were they trying to put him on the spot. You saw the pain of him trying to muster words into a sentence that he hoped would explain that Kynect would stay even if he somehow managed to repeal Obamacare. You saw the pain of a man who knew he was lying to himself, but went ahead and lied anyway. After what seemed like an eternity, Mitch slowly turned to the general direction of the question and said, “I think that’s unconnected to my comments about the overall question.”
Another lie by McConnell of course, because Kynect is Obamacare and Obamacare is Kynect!
This is how one of the biggest papers in Kentucky responded to McConnell’s deer in headlight Moment:
Huh?
Nothing could be more connected — or should be more important to Kentucky’s senior senator — than the fates of the more than 400,000 Kentuckians who are getting health insurance, many for the first time, and the federal Affordable Care Act, which is making that possible.
Repeal the federal law, which McConnell calls “Obamacare,” and the state exchange would collapse.
Kynect could not survive without the ACA’s insurance reforms, including no longer allowing insurance companies to cancel policies when people get sick or deny them coverage because of pre-existing conditions, as well as the provision ending lifetime limits on benefit payments. (Kentucky tried to enact such reforms in the 1990s and found out we were too small a market to do it alone.)
Kentucky’s exchange also could not survive without the federal funding and tax credits that are helping 300,000 previously uninsured Kentuckians gain access to regular preventive medicine, including colonoscopies, mammograms and birth control without co-pays.
As a result of a law that McConnell wants to repeal, one in 10 of his constituents no longer have to worry that an illness or injury will drive them into personal bankruptcy or a premature grave.
Repealing the federal law would also end the Medicaid expansion that is enabling Kentucky to expand desperately needed drug treatment and mental health services.
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