Kentucky's Medicaid War Is Hurting Low-Income People (HBO)
Posted
July 26, 2018
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July 26, 2018
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1,650
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7:23Now PlayingBEVERLY, Kentucky — When a federal judge struck down Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin’s plan to force Medicaid enrollees to work for benefits in June, Bevin responded by abruptly cutting vision and dental coverage for nearly 500,000 low-income people, claiming the state had no way to pay for them.
The move threw Kentucky’s health system into disarray, and patients arrived at dental clinics unaware that they no longer had coverage.
“I had abscesses that ate into the bone,” said Susan Wells, a patient at the nonprofit Shawnee Christian Healthcare Center in West Louisville. “I'm getting dentures on the top, which is embarrassing to say in front of people, because [it] shows how poor you are when you don't have teeth.”
Democrats and healthcare advocates criticized the move as vindictive and petty.
“It was clear to us that that [the governor’s] decision was punitive, that it was in retaliation to the court case not going the way that he wanted to, and he chose to take that out on almost half a million
Kentuckians who use that coverage to keep them healthy so that they can work,” said Angela Koch, the state outreach director for an advocacy group Kentucky Voices for Health.
But the Bevin administration insisted the cuts were an “unfortunate consequence” of the judge’s decision to reject the state’s plan to implement a work requirement for some people on Medicaid, a waiver that had been approved by the federal government back in January.
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