Kentucky's Health Benefit Exchange has spent over $220 million in federal grant money setting up a web site that, they claim, works better than other ObamaCare web sites around the country. The federal money dries up on December 31 and then the idea is to come after Kentuckians to finance the wild spending every year, forever.
Gov. Steve Beshear says 1.26 million people have visited the exchange web site and 60,837 have purchased an insurance policy in addition to 239,453 signing up for Medicaid. Even if we take these numbers at face value -- and there are very good reasons not to -- they don't give us any reason to expect ObamaCare is worth the waste of additional dollars.
Only in government would anyone dare suggest spending $200 per visitor to a web site is a good thing. Worse, paying nearly $750 per person who converts into a customer when four out of five of them not only do not pay (Medicaid) but cost to keep on the books would bankrupt a rich state, which we are not. And we have paid over $3600 per enrollment into a private health insurance plan for 60,837 Kentuckians after federal mandates forced 280,000 off their old plans.
And Beshear has not reported a single cancellation of ObamaCare health plans for any reason, though estimates suggest around half of Beshear's "enrolled" number is bogus. Even if you give him the benefit of the doubt, we are still spending more than $5000 to throw someone into ObamaCare. That's per person, or $20,000 for a family of four.
With all this, it's unconscionable that Senate President Robert Stivers can't muster whatever he needs to muster to strip funding for the exchange and the Medicaid expansion out of the budget. Please call him at 800-372-7181 and tell him to stop dragging this out and cut funding for ObamaCare now.
The 2014 General Assembly has screwed around on this for way too long. If they really wanted to cut healthcare costs, they would repeal Kentucky's certificate of need laws and quit playing the Obamacrats' silly games.
