Men or mice ObamaCare update

Following up on today's earlier post (click here), I called again to Jodi Whitaker in the Senate President's office just now and she said she didn't know Republican leadership's position on providing funding for ObamaCare.

I asked if she could find out and let me know and she assured me that she would.

I'll withhold further comment on this for now for no good reason whatsoever, but that won't last long.

Will Kentucky Senate be men or mice on ObamaCare?

I just left a voicemail message with Kentucky Senate President Robert Stiver's press secretary Jodi Whitaker asking if the Senate Majority has taken a position on budget funding for the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange or the optional Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare.

Waiting patiently for a response.

Please ask this question of your state Senator as well and post what you hear.

Devastating blow to Kentucky ObamaCare

House Speaker Greg Stumbo refused to grant the Kentucky ObamaCare bill a special waiver today so it could be heard in committee tomorrow. Time in the 2014 General Assembly now runs very short for the bill Gov. Beshear has been insisting in court for a year was not even necessary. His position is clearly contradicted by KRS 12.028.

If the legislature does not pass HB 505 or does not fund it in the budget by April 15, only a special session could possibly save Beshear's illegal implementation of ObamaCare, for which he has received national left-wing accolades. Stumbo's refusal today paints the clearest picture yet that sufficient support for ObamaCare in Kentucky does not exist.

Opponents of ObamaCare can now expect the ObamaCare bill to come up for a hearing in the House Health and Welfare Committee on Thursday, March 13 at noon in room 169 of the Capitol Annex in Frankfort. After the bill fails, Kentucky will default to the federal exchange which is being challenged in multiple federal lawsuits because the clear language of the "Affordable Care Act" law allows tax subsidies only in exchanges run by states.

"Waive" bye-bye to Speaker Greg Stumbo

The leading ObamaCare proponent in the Kentucky legislature has been begging House Speaker Greg Stumbo to rush through his bill to give his bill to make the federal healthcare takeover legal. So far, Stumbo doesn't seem to be going for it.

House Bill 505 would ratify Gov. Beshear's executive order creating the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange, dealing a blow to the legal challenge against Beshear's order and creating a possibility that Kentucky's ObamaCare exchange will survive legally past the end of the fiscal year.

Rep. Tom Burch filed HB 505 last Friday and wants to sneak in a hearing on the bill tomorrow before opponents can mobilize for a noon meeting of the House Health and Welfare Committee. For that to happen, Stumbo would need to waive a three day posting requirement in the committee today. Posting wavers require a voice vote on the House floor, which would ostensibly pull all the House Democrats on the record in favor of ObamaCare. Most of the House Democrats do not want to go on record in favor of ObamaCare.

Stumbo could call the voice vote and then rule however he wants, so the unpopularity of ObamaCare isn't a certain stumbling block to this happening today. But it isn't at all likely Stumbo wants to die on this hill. If he gives ObamaCare a thumbs up today, his chances of maintaining a Democratic majority in the House fall to zero.

Stumbo's chances of clinging to power after November are probably nonexistent anyway, but a procedural move for ObamaCare today would cinch it.

Anti-ObamaCare action alert for Kentucky

After a year of Gov. Beshear's legal team insisting he did not need legislative approval to create the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange for ObamaCare bureaucracy and taxes to fund it, a bill which would give him that authority was posted to the Health and Welfare committee today.

That means the bill could come up for hearing as soon as this Thursday. Please call 502-564-8100 during business hours and ask for DeeAnn Wenk, administrator of the House Health and Welfare Committee. Ask her if the committee schedule for Thursday will include House Bill 505. If she says no, ask if the schedule is complete or subject to change.

The hearing is scheduled for Thursday, March 6 at noon in room 169 of the Capitol Annex. Please make plans to attend and bring friends.

More bad news for Kentucky ObamaCare

A left-leaning political blog with unusual access to Kentucky's ObamaCare enrollment statistics reports that 75% of health policies sold on the Kentucky health "exchange" have come from the federally funded "public option" plan called Kentucky Health Cooperative. This is bad because under-pricing of these policies and poor sales overall will devastate policyholders next year when reality is more fully priced into the market.

By all accounts, Kentucky ObamaCare's paying customers are older and sicker than necessary to maintain much pricing stability for policyholders beyond the first year of the health scheme. Competing firms Anthem and Humana hoped to make up for being required to cover all applicants by signing up large numbers of them. They have failed spectacularly. The Cooperative has succeeded so far on the strength of massive federal funding and on setting its premiums far lower than its competitors. It's ability to continue on this path depends heavily on the federal government's willingness and ability to bail them out of losses due to their mis-pricing.

Kentucky's political class is starting to admit they can't rely on Gov. Beshear's illegal implementation of ObamaCare to insulate them from blame in this mess. We really can't shut down the state-run program fast enough and default to the federal exchange, which faces multiple federal court challenges. Kentucky's ObamaCare efforts remain under the cloud of a state court challenge. All these things are slowly bringing us closer to defeating ObamaCare.

Why I'm attending Hal Heiner's gubernatorial announcement event in Lexington this morning

Former Louisville Metro Councilman Hal Heiner will announce he is a candidate for Governor this morning and I will be there. I'm looking for three things from any Republican candidate for the top executive branch job in Kentucky in 2015 and that search starts with the first announced candidate.

This short list is not intended to be comprehensive; it's just a start. But I think the things I am looking for form a solid foundation for anyone running to replace the disastrous Beshear regime, both politically and in terms of moving the state in a good direction.

First is an unwavering commitment to use all available tools to get Kentucky out of Common Core and away from the traditional view of public schools here as political tools for crass politicians to wreck all manner of waste, fraud and abuse upon Kentuckians. Candidates who lead with this can be considered serious about fixing Kentucky.

Second is a clear denunciation of government control of healthcare in Kentucky. Repealing certificate of need and stripping the Department of Insurance of most of its weapons in addition to moving Kentucky as far away from ObamaCare as possible must happen to improve health outcomes in the Commonwealth. No serious candidate will fall short in this critical area.

And the third issue for legitimate candidates for governor to embrace completely is proper management of the state budget. Beshear's legacy among honest and aware chroniclers will be his unprecedented abuse of state finances, made all the worse by his serial dishonesty about it. Properly funding state pensions and getting out of corporate welfare, labor micro-management, covert deficit spending and counterproductive tax policy will create a very potent right-sizing of state government.

I'm looking for candidates who will embrace these issues and that search begins today at 10 am at Star Manufacturing in Lexington, 1200 Russell Cave Rd, at the campaign announcement of the first candidate.

McConnell's moronic MIT misstep

`Mitch McConnell is a political genius, according to people who work for him. But everyone not on the payroll is left to wonder, without hope of ever getting an answer, why a genius who never seems to tire of telling people how conservative he is now has built such a consistent record of voting to make government bigger and less affordable usually while directly benefiting corporate sponsors.

Decades of unbalanced budgets. Bank bailouts. Corporate welfare. Indefinite detention of citizens. Domestic spying. Funding for ObamaCare. Declaring war on the tea party. McConnell's hostility for conservatives is barely concealed by slick marketing.

And then came Matt Bevin.

Or to be more specific, Matt Bevin's LinkedIn page on the internet. Before Matt was even a candidate to replace McConnell representing Kentucky, Mitch was combing Matt's background looking for dirt. After failing to find any, he decided to make something up. His invention will be his undoing.

Matt attended a seminar years ago at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and listed the activity on his LinkedIn page. Unable to find another point of attack and unable to run on his own lackluster record, McConnell decided to focus his millions of dollars in political firepower on creating a fiction as the focal point of his re-election effort.

So McConnell started telling people that Matt claimed to have graduated from MIT. After masterminding attacks on Rand Paul in 2010 for "crazy ideas" and saying "he can't win" and watching his protege get crushed by 24 points, Mitch got cocky, inexplicably, and tried to launch a similarly deceptive attack on Matt Bevin. It is proving to be an historic miscalculation.

McConnell keeps doubling down on his MIT lie because it is all he has. McConnell's deceitfulness has created such significant unpopularity that he is more likely to lose in the fall than his Republican challenger. Keep talking, Mitch. You aren't hurting anyone but yourself and the people paid to tell us you are a genius.

Steve Beshear curled up in fetal position

Members of the Frankfort media are starting to ask questions Gov. Steve Beshear can't answer about a legislative bill he hoped never would see the light of day.

House Bill 505 represents the biggest embarrassment of Beshear's time as governor. Beshear has claimed in court repeatedly that he didn't need legislative approval for creating the Kentucky Obamacare "exchange." KRS 12.028 very clearly contradicts Beshear.

Beshear has been able to sidestep questions about his illegal actions up to now, but the filing of HB 505 appears to be too much to ignore. Answer your phone, Governor.

Tea Party Alert: ObamaCare in Kentucky

After bragging for a year that Gov. Beshear didn't need legislative approval to force Kentucky into ObamaCare, the Governor's legal team had to cringe Friday when Rep. Tom Burch filed a bill to give him that permission.

House Bill 505 opens up a nasty can of worms for Obamacrats: anyone who votes for it in Frankfort goes on record in support of the health reform fiasco and if the bill fails, which appears likely, the effort puts unwanted light on the series of illegal acts by the governor to improperly implement ObamaCare.

The next event to watch for is a House Health and Welfare Committee meeting in which they discuss HB 505. The committee regularly meets each Thursday at noon in the Capitol Annex. As soon as we hear that the bill will be discussed, every effort will be made to get the word out. Stay tuned...

ObamaCare has lone KY House sponsor

Probably the most left-wing member of the Kentucky House of Representatives filed a bill today to legally create the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange (ObamaCare) in Kentucky. Rep. Tom Burch of Louisville filed the bill alone, with no co-sponsors.

If House Bill 505 is not enacted into law to ratify Gov. Steve Beshear's illegal executive order creating the exchange, Kentucky's disastrous exchange will expire ninety days after the 2014 legislative session ends in April. The bill seeks to confirm Executive Order 2013-418, which was issued in violation of KRS 12.028(5) after the filing of 13-CI-423 in Franklin Circuit Court to stop Beshear's illegal implementation of the ObamaCare debacle.

Can't imagine what Burch is counting on with the last-minute filing of this bill.

Get some fries with that while you can

In Lexington, Kentucky, Xerox is seriously downgrading its ObamaCare customer service efforts amid an exodus of qualified call center workers frustrated by what some call shocking ineptitude and corruption by state officials.

As employees leave the Kynect contractor, those hired on at the beginning of operations last fall at $12.50 an hour are being replaced by new people at $10.00 an hour.

"I held on as long as I could," said one former employee who asked to not be named. "Middle management hasn't changed since the beginning, which is surprising given the lack of integrity. It's the biggest mess I've ever seen and it just kept getting worse."

Leaders in the Kentucky General Assembly have made no apparent effort to ensure continued funding for the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange, whose operations are paid for by federal grants expiring at the end of 2014. If Kentucky does not continue their ObamaCare exchange operations next year, we will default to a federally run exchange and save Kentucky taxpayers many millions of dollars. Implementation of the state exchange currently faces legal challenge in state courts. Federal funding of federally run exchanges faces multiple legal challenges in federal courts.

Mitch McConnell campaigning like a drunken sailor

Sen. Mitch McConnell's latest campaign mailer demonstrates clearly he has been in Washington D.C. too long. Labeled on the outside "Fraud Alert," the mail piece is devoted entirely to attacking Matt Bevin with the same tired lies McConnell has been spreading for a whole year.

After voting repeatedly to make government bigger and less affordable, betraying conservatives on ObamaCare, sequester and the Obama budget and declaring war on the tea party, McConnell's credibility continues to sink along with his poll numbers. Kentucky conservatives must renew their call for McConnell to drop his bid for re-election.

Rebellion: ObamaCare contractors starting to turn

Governor Steve Beshear's idea of fiscal responsibility in ObamaCare, apparently, is short-changing contract labor in his Kentucky Health Benefits Exchange.

This probably wasn't a very good idea because, while the media has been all-too-happy to turn a blind eye to the many problems in Kentucky that have plagued ObamaCare here, the contractors have been taking careful notes.

Expect the excrement to hit fan very soon.

Medical marijuana day in Frankfort today

The Kentucky House Health and Welfare Committee looks ready to send medical marijuana to the House floor today. The committee meets at noon and will take up HB 350.

Republican opposition to ending this big chunk of the "war on drugs" has been reduced to just a handful of politicians who are unable to make a case for why they want government to hold onto so much illegitimate power over people.

Ending the government's "war on drugs" brings with it a huge fiscal benefit. Getting out of the way of hemp and medical marijuana are intermediate steps, but they are big ones. People who dislike drugs -- like me -- need to turn to persuading people with logic because the big government drug police sledgehammer is being taken away.

Improve Kentucky's "Tim Tebow" bill

A Kentucky Senate bill filed Monday deserves a look because it would allow children not enrolled in public schools to be involved in school extracurricular activities, including sports. Such a law in Florida allowed former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow to play high school football as a homeschooled student, so similar laws in other states are often unofficially named after him.

Amid the wreckage of Common Core, though, this bill needs one brief amendment.

The bill would add a new section to KRS 158. Section 1(1)(c) of the new law would state in part that any participant in public school extracurricular activities must: "adhere to the same academic standards as other participants." This is more than a little silly and needs to be fixed. I don't know anyone leaving the public schools because the academic standards are too high.

Should Kentucky fail to escape the federal Common Core dumbing down, the distance between public school student academic standards and those of private and homeschooled students will only get bigger. This bill should be amended in Section 1(1)(c) to read "adhere to academic standards at least as rigorous as other participants."

New ObamaCare glitch soaks Kentuckians

Gov. Steve Beshear is trying to keep quiet a Kynect web site glitch resulting in payment of excessive federal subsidies in January and February which must now be removed, resulting in higher premium payments for ObamaCare customers. The biggest unanswered question now is where the money comes from to pay for two months of premium shortages.

The glitch resulted in customer premium payments plus improperly excessive federal subsidies going to the insurers for the first two months of ObamaCare. Reducing subsidy payments for March and beyond, as the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange (KHBE) told victims will now happen, means higher payments for those who purchased ObamaCare plans. KHBE said customers will not be responsible for making up deficits in their accounts due to the overpayments in January and February. So, who pays?

It's possible the federal government will eat the costs of the KHBE mistake, but not very likely. Same goes for the insurance companies. That leaves state taxpayers. Is that what's happening? Are state taxpayers picking up the tab for Gov. Beshear's mistake without being told about it?

Please ask your state Senator and state Representative about this.

Beshear bludgeons more ObamaCare victims

The preferred narrative in Frankfort takes a hit this week as tens of thousands of Kentuckians get ObamaCare letters apologizing that a computer glitch overestimated their federal subsidies and demanding additional payments to keep their new health insurance.

That should be popular, especially for those just now learning about the limitations on their new policies. This disaster can't end soon enough.

Arkansas showing Kentucky how to deauthorize Medicaid expansion

Arkansas legislators took the ObamaCare bait last year on a version of ObamaCare Medicaid expansion, but seem to be thinking better of it this year when they are being asked to pour more state funds in. State officials say 100,000 Arkansans will be dropped from the program on July 1 if funding is not approved, and Kentucky should be paying very close attention.

Kentucky is currently spending unappropriated dollars on its ObamaCare Medicaid expansion, which was implemented illegally and remains mired in a legal challenge. If the Kentucky General Assembly session ends April 15 without funds allocated for the expansion, we will also be cancelling Medicaid cards in one fell swoop.

The ObamaCare disaster is sure to be a big issue in Kentucky legislative elections later this year.

Beshear blames ObamaCare failure on Republicans

Gov. Steve Beshear's bizarre attempt to force Kentucky into ObamaCare will look a lot stranger when its over, as it becomes clear that it was never going to work. For now, he continues to regale any clueless national media figures he can find with falsehoods about the federal takeover of healthcare.

"Look, let me tell you how I sold this to Kentuckians," Beshear told USA Today in an interview published this morning. "I told them, I said, 'Look, you don't have to like the president. You don't have to like me. Because this is not about the president or about me. It's about you.'"

Actually, his sales pitch was only three words long:



Beshear also told USA today he expects to have 300,000 Kentuckians signed up for ObamaCare by the end of open enrollment on March 31. We can only assume from this he intends to still be counting unpaid, cancelled applications as enrollments at least that long.

But the best part came when Beshear was asked about the disastrous results for the federal ObamaCare website operating in the dozens of states who were smart enough to opt out of the responsibility of setting up an exchange web site and bureaucracy as well as paying 100% of the costs starting in 2015.

"In their defense," Beshear said, "they (the federal government) had a much bigger audience than we did. ... I don't think they expected so many states to refuse to do their own exchanges."

Right, a "big audience" is what caused all the problems. In related news, not one single Democrat has filed a bill to ratify Beshear's executive order creating Kentucky's exchange. That won't change today. Failure to gain ratification by April 15 by the entire legislature will result in the nullification of the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange pursuant to KRS 12.028(5).