In Kentucky governor’s race, the president’s health plan takes center stage.
The sudden collapse of nonprofit health plans supported by tens of millions of dollars in Obamacare loans is igniting a new political wildfire over the health law — and it’s playing out in a tight gubernatorial race in Kentucky.
The recent demise of Kentucky Health Cooperative, a nonprofit startup seeded with federal loan dollars under the Affordable Care Act, is part of a bigger, national trend. More than a third of the 23 nonprofit health plans created under Obamacare with $2.4 billion in federal loan dollars have collapsed, and most experts predict more failures on the horizon. Late last week, South Carolina’s co-op became the ninth to fail, following similar crashes in Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska and New York.
Story Continued Below
But Kentucky is in the spotlight because the co-op went bust earlier this month amid a high-stakes political contest and it is quickly becoming a wildcard issue. The Kentucky plan dominated exchange enrollment during the first two years of operations, capturing roughly 60 percent of customers in a red state hailed as a symbol of Obamacare’s potential. Those Kentuckians will now have to scramble to find new coverage during the looming open-enrollment period, beginning Nov. 1, just as voters head to the polls to pick a new governor.
Read more here.