[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9179]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




            KENTUCKY NATIONAL MODEL FOR AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

  (Mr. YARMUTH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, Kentucky has been a national model for the 
Affordable Care Act. In the first 6 months of Kentucky Kynect, the 
State exchange created by the law, we enrolled nearly 415,000 
Kentuckians in new health coverage.
  That is one in 10 Kentuckians and nearly half our previously 
uninsured population; but rather than help inform his constituents of 
life-saving options now available to them, Senator Mitch McConnell has 
spent the past 4 years working to repeal that coverage while misleading 
Kentuckians about the law.
  Now, he is suggesting Kynect's overwhelming success can remain, even 
if he succeeds in repealing the law that created it. That couldn't be 
more disconnected from the truth.
  If the Affordable Care Act is repealed, more than 300,000 Kentuckians 
covered through the law's expansion of Medicaid would lose their 
coverage. Insurers would no longer be required to cover preexisting 
conditions, and private plans through Kynect would become unaffordable 
for most Kentucky families.
  Mr. Speaker, health reform has been so successful in Kentucky that 
Mitch McConnell now says we should keep Kynect, but his claim that we 
can keep Kynect and still repeal the Affordable Care Act is as absurd 
as it is disingenuous, and our constituents deserve to know that.

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