Tagged: Affordable Care Act

Kentucky Tea Party activists are carrying their fight against the Affordable Care Act into the new year.

Before the first gavel of the session Tuesday, Tea Party activists plan to rally in the Capitol Rotunda against the ACA.

It’s the second capital rally against the law, which Kentucky has actively worked to implement under an executive order from Governor Steve Beshear.

Rally organizer and activist David Adams says the goal of the event is to convince lawmakers to pass a measure overturning Beshear’s order.

The Speaker of the Kentucky House says it’s a no-brainer for Kentucky to expand its Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act.

Under the health care law, states can expanded their Medicaid rolls to 138 percent of the poverty line, with the federal government picking up the tab for three years. 

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear has yet to decide whether Kentucky will expand, saying he will calculate costs after 2017, when the feds pay only 90 percent of the expansion.

But Democratic House Speaker Greg Stumbo says he's encouraging Beshear to commit to Medicaid expansion now.

“I think it would be a penny wise and a pound foolish not to find the money,” Stumbo says.

Despite progress toward building a state-run health insurance exchange in Kentucky, Governor Steve Beshear will likely have to re-issue an executive order to keep it alive.

Beshear issued an order creating the exchange earlier this year, after the Supreme Court ruled the Affordable Care Act was constitutional. And it’s a goal of state health officials to get the exchange protected under a law, rather than an executive order.

But Republican State Senator Tom Buford says his colleagues aren’t likely to support an exchange law.

“Probably not, in my opinion, we will probably allow the Governor to re-order the executive order again," said Buford.