Kentucky released this video in May to explain how reform would work
Beyond all the political rhetoric, there's a simple reality: Obamacare was designed to help real people solve a real problem—getting quality, affordable health insurance—and when you read their stories, they are quite moving. Take for example the stories told in this weekend'sWashington Post from the perspective of Kentucky native Courtney Lively who has been signing up people for coverage in her home state's insurance exchanges:
Now it was the beginning of another day, and a man Lively would list as Client 375 sat across from her in her office at a health clinic next to a Hardee’s.
“So, is that Breathitt County?” she asked Woodrow Wilson Noble as she tapped his information into a laptop Thursday morning.
“Yeah, we live on this side of the hill,” said Noble, whose family farm had gone under, who lived on food stamps and what his mother could spare, and who was about to hear whether he would have health insurance for the first time in his 60-year-old life.
This is how things are going in Kentucky: As conservatives argued that the new health-care law will wreck the economy, as liberals argued it will save billions, as many Americans raged at losing old health plans and some analysts warned that a disproportionate influx of the sick and the poor could wreck the new health-care model, Lively was telling Noble something he did not expect to hear.
“All right,” she said. “We’ve got you eligible for Medicaid.”
Kentucky is a state where Obamacare is working and so far the best Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell can do is deride it as "free health care," which I guess means that the official Republican position is that health care coverage ought to be more expensive. With a message like that—and with newly insured Kentuckians in deep red areas talking about voting Democratic—it's clear that Obamacare could ultimately become the GOP's worst nightmare, despite the rocky rollout.