Later this month, Virginia's legislature will pass a budget prohibiting their Democratic governor from forcing the state into the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion. We know all about this because the Washington Post has been providing a fairly balanced and accurate play-by-play coverage of a pretty dramatic partisan struggle.
In Kentucky, we have had no such luck in terms of on-the-ball media coverage. Our legislature almost unanimously defunded both the state run ObamaCare exchange and expanded Medicaid in its budget, but no one knows about it because the only person in Frankfort talking about it is Senator Damon Thayer.
Kentucky's budget language forbids expenditure of state funds for anything directly or indirectly related to the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange. Kentucky is the only state in the nation that tied its Medicaid expansion to its exchange. Also, the Medicaid expansion language in the "Affordable Care Act" requires states to spend their own money on administrative expenses related to the expansion. That has also been expressly prohibited.
Two Kentucky Supreme Court cases seek to clarify the law on these issues. They are 13-SC-000652 and 13-SC-000667.
