As highlighted in my previous post, in the recent NYT/Kaiser poll of attitudes toward the ACA in four red states, an astounding 57-60% of respondents reported that someone in their household has a pre-existing condition. In Kentucky, the number was 60%.
That fact throws into stark relief Mitch McConnell's response when asked what he would do for terminally ill Kentuckians who would lose their new insurance if the ACA is repealed, as he has demanded it must be:
There are a lot of people like that, of course, who are losing what they had before, who were insured through the high-risk pool, who are losing what they had before.The way that should’ve been handled was state-based high-risk pools. Not at the federal level. Because for every one of those, you’ve got somebody who was insured and through a state-based high-risk pool, who lost their situation because they were wiped out Dec. 31 of 2013. So I’m worried about those people.As the Louisville Eccentric Observer, an alt-weekly, points out*, the state's high risk pool covered fewer than 4,000 people in 2013 -- less than one hundredth of the 413,000 who obtained insurance this year via Kynect, the state's ACA exchange. Ah, Mitch might respond, but not all of those 400,000 would need a high-risk pool. True -- just most of them (or else would pay through the nose for private insurance).
