Which day will Kynect run out of money?

Kentucky ObamaCare officials have no idea where their money will come from when $253 million in federal grants funds run out sometime early in 2015. The Kentucky General Assembly has refused to provide funding for continuing operations of the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange and the federal "Affordable Care Act" requires states opting to create their own exchange to pay their own way after initial federal money is exhausted.

Governor Steve Beshear attempted to create KHBE in the summer of 2012 with a temporary executive order under KRS 12.028 which the legislature was never asked to ratify, violating the statute. When Beshear's 2012 executive order expired in the summer of 2013, he issued another order under the same statute creating the exchange anew, which also violated the statute.

A lone House Democrat filed a bill in February to ratify the second, illegitimate executive order, exposing the incompetence behind Kentucky ObamaCare. And both chambers of the legislature just this week voted to disallow any state spending for the scheme.

And even if Beshear vetoes the defunding language, there is no authority to fund the exchange or even for it to continue to exist at all. Beshear needs to admit his failure so we can begin an orderly unwinding of Kentucky ObamaCare. Until then, he should start estimating for all of us how much time is left for this charade.

Kerri Richardson ate lunch

I sent an email to Gov. Steve Beshear's press secretary Kerri Richardson on her government email an hour ago asking the following:

Kerri,

When will Gov. Beshear release statistics on how many kynect enrollees have had their policies cancelled due to nonpayment of premium? Have any policies been cancelled due to nonpayment of premium or other reasons?

Thanks,

David

I copied a member of the Frankfort press corps on the email, which is a tactic that worked better when shame still existed on the first or second floors of the Capitol building. Still, I'm eagerly awaiting an answer or for others to ask the questions. Beshear's ObamaCare numbers have no meaning without some of this context.

Pro-ObamaCare arguments grow weaker, more shrill

The Economist has a new article promoting ObamaCare in Kentucky. It starts with a rehashing of Yahoo's assessment that it is "wildly successful," but just as the article builds to an exciting conclusion to the question of why all this government activism is so unpopular here, it instead reverts to the old claim that you just want poor people to die.

And this is significant because if they had anything better now would definitely be the time to use it.

From the article:
"Can't afford," here, is a euphemism. If, as Mr Benvenuti says, Kentucky "can't pay for" a 10% contribution towards Medicaid for its poorer citizens, it is because he believes the state's wealthier taxpayers don't want to pay for it. To warn of "creating dependency" is to pretend that there is some other way to make it possible for poor people to get decent health-insurance coverage. But there is no other way, as America's health-insurance system has proven. (emphasis added) Obamacare has given people who fundamentally don't want to have to pay for universal health insurance a word on which to focus their disgust. They need not acknowledge that they would simply prefer for many people to go without healthcare. (emphasis added)

As we have attempted to keep the focus on Governor Steve Beshear's illegal actions to force Kentucky into ObamaCare, we have clarified the issue well enough that no one in Frankfort had the nerve to seriously try to make his actions legal. They now have little choice but to pretend that healthcare in America has never worked. The truth is that government bureaucratic involvement has driven costs into the stratosphere just as technological advances and a competitive marketplace could have lowered them.  And government bureaucrats have no effective tools to lower costs now except rationing services or getting out of the way. And they really don't want to get out of the way, lest everyone realize we don't need them at all.

So they accuse us of wanting to deny poor people health care just as their preferred approach creates denial of services to more people regardless of their economic status. That's socialized equality we should all know enough to continue resisting forever.

Time to count up faked KY ObamaCare policies

At the end of 2013, Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange Executive Director Carrie Banahan said ObamaCare policies not paid for by January 10 would be cancelled on that day. As enrollment numbers continued to lag, she moved that date to March 31.

You know what day it is today, right?

Exchange officials have been pretending all was well with policies marked "pending" on their system and counted in their press releases, when they knew nothing was behind those numbers. They must come clean very soon.

The strategy has been to delay, deny and deflect all the bad news until Kentucky's Obamacrats could get their hooks in so deep ObamaCare couldn't be unwound. In this, they have failed. Only a handful of legislators in either state chamber voted yesterday against the budget agreement defunding ObamaCare here and not a single one of them mentioned it as a reason for their vote. In fact, the only mentions of ObamaCare in floor speeches all day was that defunding it was a reason to vote for the budget.

The game is up, Governor. Come clean and let's start cleaning up your mess today.

Now let's DISMANTLE ObamaCare in Kentucky

Kentucky's brain dead media doesn't want you to think about what Gov. Steve Beshear is thinking about this morning. If he vetoes budget language passed almost unanimously out of both chambers of the legislature yesterday, he could soon find himself with a Republican House and Senate in Frankfort.

Actually, he probably is going to get that anyway. Vulnerable House Democrats clinging to a slim majority already tried and failed to fight off ObamaCare defunding once. Facing an override of a pro-ObamaCare veto is not a position Beshear wants to force on what's left of his friends.

And the truth is it would all be for naught anyway. Whatever flimsy legal underpinning ObamaCare implementation had in Kentucky is now completely gone. So what's next?

The federal government has until January 1 to take over control of the Kentucky ObamaCare "exchange" and however many Kentuckians have been given Medicaid cards under false pretenses by Beshear and his crazed Cabinet for Health and Family Services need to be told the truth. And then we need to turn Frankfort's culture of corruption surrounding Beshear and his short time in the spotlight as an ObamaCare darling into an HHS waiver allowing health insurers to sell policies people want and can afford. That simply means dropping all government coverage mandates and letting the market decide how people and their doctors manage their business relationships and their transactions. Kentucky has a unique problem with a bunch of people given promises an out of control governor and president can't keep. We deserve a unique solution. Now.

Further delay in starting this process only hurts Kentuckians.

Statement on Kentucky ObamaCare defunding

The Kentucky General Assembly today almost unanimously voted to defund ObamaCare in the Commonwealth as it mandated that no general fund dollars can be spent on the Medicaid expansion or health benefit exchange in the next biennium.

"I really appreciated the widespread agreement among Kentucky's representatives that state funds should not be spent on ObamaCare," said David Adams, an ardent opponent of the federal health reform who is suing to stop state implementation of it. "The Kentucky Supreme Court does not now need to stop the waste of funds, but they do need to speak to Gov. Beshear's illegal attempt to force us into ObamaCare without proper approval. Protecting the process is their job and it's time to do it."

"The General Assembly never ratified Beshear's executive order creating the exchange and the emergency administrative regulation was filed too late to create the Medicaid expansion so the issue is very simple," Adams said.

Fear not Beshear's ObamaCare defunding veto pen

The 2014 Kentucky General Assembly is sending a budget bill to Gov. Steve Beshear with language forbidding expenditure of state funds on ObamaCare, which Beshear is expected to veto.

It doesn't matter if he does or not, though, because no ratification of Beshear's executive order creating the ObamaCare "exchange" took place, nor was it possible to repair the legal problems with Beshear's unilateral acceptance of the Medicaid expansion.

Defunding ObamaCare in Kentucky by the General Assembly makes clear the legislature's repudiation of the federal takeover of health care. For symbolism, we have that even if the governor strikes it out. If the House fails to override, Republicans have that failure to use to replace Democrats as the majority in that body.

And even if Democrats do vote to override, we have their treachery on the first House vote to defund to beat them with. In any event, the next step is to go before the Kentucky Supreme Court with our twin legal challenges to ObamaCare to set right again constitutional limits of the governor's power.

Kentucky ObamaCare public option covers abortions

Kentucky's health insurance cooperative, the "public option" created by ObamaCare with a massive federal subsidy, covers abortions in violation of state law.

KRS 304.5-160 plainly forbids insurers from covering "elective abortions," which it defines as an abortion performed for any reason other than to preserve the life of the mother carrying the baby.

On page 17 of the individual health contract provided by the Kentucky Health Cooperative Inc. It clearly defines coverages to include "therapeutic abortion," which it defines as one recommended by a doctor and clarifies that "A therapeutic abortion is one performed to save the life or health of the mother."

The phrase "or the health of" constitutes an illegal expansion of coverage limitations on abortion in Kentucky. This expansion could mean anything. Someone wishing an abortion could merely state anxiety affecting her health because of her unplanned pregnancy and get an abortion doctor to sign of, saying that the abortion is necessary for her health.

The Kentucky Department of Insurance under Gov. Steve Beshear went crazy when I first discovered their pro-abortion game a year and a half ago. Please call your legislator and also the Kentucky Department of Insurance Commissioner Sharon Clark at 502-564-3630 and demand that they follow the law and forbid insurance coverage of abortions in Kentucky.

Left-wing media figure decimates KY Obamacrats

Perry Bacon is a Louisville-born national journalist who makes no bones about his support for Obama and all things ObamaCare. He spoke with me at length while he was writing a story (link here) in which he describes ObamaCare in Kentucky as "wildly successful" and finds continued resistance hard to understand.

In the story, Bacon unwittingly gives up why ObamaCare must be taken down in Kentucky. He writes:

"Beshear over the last two years has stunned Republicans and even Democrats here with his forceful advocacy of the ACA. He unilaterally decided to create a health care exchange and expand Medicaid, (emphasis added) ignoring complaints from Republicans in the state's Legislature who either opposed those moves outright or wanted to reach some sort of compromise."

And he continues:

"Beshear, to the consternation of Kentucky conservatives, has not only implemented the law without any input from them, (emphasis added) but spent the last several months on something of a victory tour, penning an op-ed in The New York Times telling Obamacare opponents to "get over it," making regular appearances on MSNBC touting Kentucky’s success and sitting in first lady Michelle Obama's box when Obama singled him out for praise at the State of the Union address."

And this might be the best part as well as most timely now that the focus of so much attention is on the state budget:

"Beshear is looking for ways to fund the state’s health-insurance exchange (emphasis added) without using taxpayer dollars, a move that would make it harder for state Republicans to argue that implementing the ACA is draining state resources. "

So here is one of the biggest media fans of ObamaCare in the country writing a glowing article about Beshear not taking any lip from Republicans or allowing nasty little things like the Constitution get in his way contradicting Beshear's obviously false claim that he has already worked out ObamaCare exchange funding and that it doesn't take state dollars. Thank you, Perry Bacon.

Kentucky budget deal defunds ObamaCare

Kentucky Democrat budget negotiators had to choose between Gov. Steve Beshear's obvious lie that state dollars weren't necessary for ObamaCare and the language in the "Affordable Care Act" that anyone who has looked has already seen. This morning, they chose reality and joined Republicans, taxpayers and anyone who might need medical assistance in the future in denying Beshear the ability to waste Kentucky taxpayer money on the ObamaCare scheme.

Unpopularity of both the unworkable ObamaCare mess and Beshear's illegal implementation of it created significant Democrat nervousness in recent weeks and a very tepid defense of those tactics in budget negotiations.

House Democrats seeking re-election must now be ready to override a Beshear veto or spend the rest of the year and beyond trying in vain to defend the indefensible. Our two legal challenges to Beshear's illegal actions will benefit from a final budget that defunds, but will not be hurt if that process somehow fails.

Better off without a Kentucky budget

Kentucky's Constitution does not require the legislature to pass a budget. At all. And this year, not passing an executive branch budget could go a very long way to restoring liberty and some semblance of fiscal responsibility to our state.

The surest way to defund ObamaCare and Common Core is to give up on passing one big Executive Branch funding document and come back and fund what we need piecemeal. If we can't agree on all health policy spending, we just shut down the parts that aren't explicitly mandated constitutionally or elsewhere by law. Same goes for education. Economic development? Check. The Labor Cabinet? Yes, that too. Freedom lovers need to embrace this approach and spread the word quickly.

I will be in Owensboro on Saturday at noon at the Unbridled Liberty Tour event at the National Guard Armory speaking about this. If you are in the area, come on by.

We can make it happen, but it will take a lot of work. Please help fund the effort to restore fiscal sanity to Frankfort by clicking here and donating what you can.

Thanks for your continued support,

Will Kentucky media report this?

Kentucky Speaker Pro Tem Larry Clark just erupted in budget negotiations in Frankfort over ObamaCare funding, asking "Do you all want a budget or not?"

No one answered his question, but the only response is "not one that funds ObamaCare in Kentucky, Mr. Speaker."

Despite widespread belief the General Assembly is constitutionally required to pass a budget, no such requirement exists. From the Kentucky Supreme Court decision in Fletcher v. Commonwealth: 

"There is no constitutional mandate that the General Assembly enact a budget bill, and there is no statute providing for an alternative when it fails to do so.   Despite much hand-wringing and doomsday forecasting by some of the parties to this action at the prospect that we would hold that Section 230 means what it unambiguously says, it is not our prerogative to amend the Constitution or enact statutes.   When the General Assembly declines to exercise its appropriations power, that power does not flow over the “high wall” erected by Section 28 to another department of government."

This means, very simply, that without an appropriation there can be no Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange nor can there be an ObamaCare Medicaid expansion if the General Assembly refuses to pass an executive branch budget.

WFPL contradicts KY House Dems on ObamaCare

Louisville Public radio outlet WFPL picked up on Kentucky Senate Republicans' effort to defund ObamaCare in the state budget and promptly got almost every pertinent detail of the story wrong. Interestingly, the WFPL version of events doesn't square with complaints of House Democrats.

That's a conflict you almost never see.

House Speaker Greg Stumbo argued yesterday that state funds are needed for ObamaCare, which is the opposite of what Gov. Steve Beshear -- and now WFPL -- insist on. Stumbo is right here, as the federal "Affordable Care Act" and state regulations make clear.

Kentucky is already illegally paying benefits to state employees running the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange without legal authority. Kentucky is also spending millions in Medicaid administration funds without a legislative appropriation. Worse, the federal ACA makes clear that states are responsible for 100% of the costs of running their state-run exchanges as of January 1, 2015 -- which is six months in to the budget currently being negotiated. And large Medicaid administration costs are also required in the new budget if we are to adopt the Medicaid expansion. Senate language forbidding the use of state funds to permanently expand Medicaid or create a new plan like it very effectively kills off the Medicaid expansion.

 The greatest likelihood is the legislature will close April 15 without a state budget, which also defunds ObamaCare.

Overexposed at the Kentucky Derby Festival

Kentucky Obamacrats jumped the shark a long time ago by arrogantly parading around the state in front of hostile crowds and refusing to answer their questions, spending profligately with no legislative authority and falsely claiming success on a whirlwind national media tour.

But this is even better.

The Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange has sponsored a hot air balloon for the Kentucky Derby Festival.

Spending money we don't have to buy hot air we don't need to advertise at us a product we aren't even supposed to be able to buy on the first Saturday in May.

House Dems not showing much energy for ObamaCare

House Democrats' best argument for throwing Kentucky into ObamaCare is that Gov. Beshear is lying about federal health reform.

The House budget includes funds for mandated ObamaCare coverages that are supposed to be paid by the federal government. The Senate withdrew those funds because they are supposed to be paid with federal funds through ObamaCare. Gov. Beshear has insisted that state funds are not necessary for ObamaCare, which contradicts the language of the "Affordable Care Act."

House Speaker Greg Stumbo complained that if the funds were not spent "it's not like it will be wasted," and said the Senate was being "penny wise and pound foolish." But the whole point of getting states to buy into ObamaCare is to get them to spend billions of dollars they don't have. That's always been the point.

If this is the best the House can come up with in defense of Obama's "signature achievement," Senate Republicans should have no trouble holding on a little while and waiting for Democrats to cave.

Kentucky ObamaCare still has us upside down

One interesting point from Kentucky's obviously bogus ObamaCare statistics is that if 25% of new enrollees into expanded Medicaid in the state dropped or were dropped from private insurance and 25% of new enrollees in the ObamaCare health insurance dropped or were dropped from private health insurance, then by their own numbers we have 40,000 more uninsured Kentuckians that we did before ObamaCare.

Gov. Steve Beshear reports 257,477 new Medicaid enrollees, with 193,107 of them not having prior coverage. Beshear also reports 64,455 new ObamaCare health insurance purchasers, with 48,431 of them not having prior coverage. That's a total of 241,448 Kentuckians gaining some kind of new coverage. And as the Kentucky Department of Insurance reported back in November, 280,000 Kentuckians lost coverage because of ObamaCare.

The truth is very likely far worse as these numbers do not account for cancelled policies or bogus Medicaid applications, of which there have been a bunch.

Will Beshear sign Senate's defund language and then ignore it?

I talked with Perry Bacon of MSNBC this afternoon about the Kentucky ObamaCare fiasco. He has been talking to Gov. Beshear and House and Senate leaders about the budget and particularly the ObamaCare element of it. He seems to think Democrats will pass and Beshear will sign Senate Republicans' defunding language and then proceed as if its prohibitions against spending state funds on ObamaCare do not exist.

Kentucky is already spending General Fund dollars on administrative costs directly related to the Medicaid expansion. The federal ObamaCare law requires state funds to finance all ObamaCare exchange costs starting January 1, 2015. And when HB 505 dies on April 15, so will any possibility of legislative approval of the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange.

This Kentucky ObamaCare fraud needs an audit

Kentucky's Obamacrats report that 75% of sign-ups for ObamaCare health plans were previously uninsured and 75% of sign-ups for expanded ObamaCare Medicaid were previously uninsured and no mainstream media reporter anywhere seems to see anything odd about that at all.

Seriously. Seventy five percent for both? Not seventy three for one and sixty eight for the other? Seventy five percent is supposed to the be the real number for both. There is no way. These statistics are screaming for an audit.

Even if you try to accept these numbers at face value, you can't. Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange employees who will talk report that attempting to enter information about an applicant's coverage status routinely results in an error message on their system. And even if only twenty five percent of new Medicaid recipients dropped private health insurance to go on Medicaid, that's one-fourth of Kentucky's Medicaid expansion costs going to cover people who were previously taking care of themselves. How would you like it if out of every four houses on your street, the government came in and made one of them a Section 8 house?

These Kentucky Obamacrats act like the old Soviet economic planners declaring victory on the latest Five Year Plan as their economy crumbled. If we had a real media left, these damnable statistics wouldn't last sixty seconds.

Beshear in a box on ObamaCare

The Frankfort media is missing the Kentucky ObamaCare defunding story simply because Gov. Beshear is telling them he won't need General Fund dollars in the next biennium to fund the "Affordable Care Act." This is inexcusable, because the federal law requires states opting in to a state-run exchange and Medicaid expansion spend state funds to do so.

Federal funds for the ObamaCare exchange run out completely on December 31, 2014. The temporary 100% federal match on Medicaid expansion only applies to medical expenses of newly eligible Medicaid recipients under the expansion. That means all exchange expenses starting in 2015 and all Medicaid administrative costs associated with the expansion and all medical expenses of previously eligible Medicaid recipients forced into the program by the coverage mandate come from the General Fund already and continue in perpetuity.

Gov. Beshear set this mess up himself, which Kentucky law does not allow him to do. The following language in the Senate's budget (HB 235) moves to strike his actions down:

Subsequent to these Executive Branch actions, no executive order related to the ACA has been codified by the General Assembly, nor has any administrative regulation related to the ACA been approved by a vote of the majority of the members of a legislative committee. Providing that the Governor continues unilateral implementation and operation of the ACA in the Commonwealth, the General Assembly shall limit the ACA's impact on the 2014-2016 State/Executive Branch Budget and future biennial budgets so as not to bind future General Assemblies. Therefore, no provision within this Act shall be deemed, adjudged, or constructed as being a recognition, finding, or admission of the General Assembly's approval of the operation of the ACA in Kentucky.

This language is important because it emphasizes Beshear's attempt to force us into ObamaCare was done without legislative approval. It is not critical this language stays in the final budget because the law is already clear on how Beshear must get legislative approval, but House Democrats won't want to argue to remove it nor can Beshear complain without admitting that he didn't get and doesn't have legislative approval, which he must have. Kentucky is not a dictatorship, but a constitutional republic.

Beshear's dishonesty also presents serious problems for him when the Senate gets more specific in defunding ObamaCare. See the following passage:

The Governor is expressly prohibited from expending any General Fund resources on any expenditure directly or indirectly associated with the Health Benefit Exchange.

Again, he has said he doesn't need any General Fund dollars, so this is no problem, right? Beshear's quandary is that he either admits to lying now in order to demand funding he needs  in nine months or just gets caught later and hopes no one notices. It's already too late for both.

And then there is the Medicaid expansion.

As the only body in the Commonwealth with the constitutional power to make appropriations, the General Assembly recognizes that federal funding for the expansion of Kentucky's Medicaid Program is not recurring in nature; therefore, the intent of the General Assembly is that funds received from the Affordable Care Act, or its successor, shall not be used to permanently expand existing programs, permanently create new programs, or in any way increase the requirements to be placed on the General Fund or Road Fund above the adjusted appropriation level as of June 30, 2014.

The key here is prohibiting expenditures "above the adjusted appropriations level as of June 30, 2014." Again, Beshear must either admit he needs a lot more money quickly after saying he needs none or just wait and hope no one notices him violating Section 230 of the Kentucky Constitution by spending unappropriated funds.

House Democrats will get another chance to weigh in on ObamaCare, but they can't save Beshear. They can only expose him.

Stay on them now

The Kentucky state Senate just defunded ObamaCare.