Kentucky Governor Is Going to Screw Medicaid Recipients Come Hell or High Water

Jeff Malet/Newscom via ZUMA

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Last week, a federal court struck down a plan from Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin to implement work requirements for Medicaid recipients. Today he got his revenge:

Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration has abruptly cut Medicaid dental and vision benefits to nearly half a million Kentuckians.

….”This is an unfortunate consequence of the judge’s ruling,” said an email Sunday from Doug Hogan, communications director for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services….”When Kentucky HEALTH was struck down by the court, the ‘My Rewards Account’ program was invalidated, meaning there is no longer a legal mechanism in place to pay for dental and vision coverage for about 460,000 beneficiaries who have been placed in the Alternative Benefit Plan,” the email said. “As such, they no longer have access to dental and vision coverage as a result of the court’s ruling.”

What a dick.

In other Kentucky news, Rand Paul announced that “Capitol Police have issued an arrest warrant for a man who threatened to kill me and chop up my family with an axe.” So, um, that’s Kentucky today.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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