[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13632]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                AFFORDABLE CARE ACT SUCCEEDS IN KENTUCKY

  (Mr. YARMUTH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, my home State of Kentucky has been a 
national model for how the Affordable Care Act can succeed. Through 
Kynect, our State exchange, more than 413,000 Kentuckians have gotten 
health insurance, nearly 310,000 of them for the first time.
  These two maps show how health reform has reduced the rate of the 
uninsured in the Commonwealth's 120 counties. The orange and red in the 
top map show counties with pre-Affordable Care Act uninsured rates of 
14 percent to more than 20 percent. Some of the most impoverished 
areas, such as eastern Kentucky, also had the highest uninsured rates.
  The bottom map shows Kentucky today under the health care law. Only 
one county still has an uninsured rate of more than 14 percent. In 
three counties in the heart of Appalachia, the uninsured rate plummeted 
from more than 20 percent to less than 5 percent, as shown in blue.
  Mr. Speaker, overall, in just 6 months, the Affordable Care Act 
reduced the total number of uninsured Kentuckians by nearly a half. 
Behind every number, behind every red county turned blue or green are 
the stories of a person or family getting the health care they need. 
That is success by any standard, but most importantly, Kentucky 
standards.

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