Deborah Yetter

Louisville Courier Journal

Barely two months out of office, former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear on Thursday launched a campaign to try to stop his successor, Gov. Matt Bevin, from dismantling the health care initiatives he enacted.

"Gov. Bevin is working to take health care away from people who needed it desperately and for so long didn't have it," he said at a news conference in Louisville. "I'm not going to let that opportunity be taken away from them without a fight."

Bevin fired back a few hours later by blasting Beshear's health initiatives enacted through executive order.

“This decision, arbitrarily, unilaterally to expand Medicaid bypassing the legislature disregard completely how to pay for it and leaving that for the next governor to clean up, I am that next governor and I’m attempting to clean it up,” Bevin said.

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Beshear, announcing he has formed the organization "Save Kentucky Healthcare," said he and supporters will use it to promote the changes he enacted to implement the Affordable Care Act, adding health coverage for more than 500,000 Kentuckians.

Under Beshear, a Democrat, Kentucky became the only Southern state to create its own health insurance exchange and accept the expansion of Medicaid to cover more, low-income citizens under the law also known as Obamacare.

But Bevin, a Republican, saying Kentucky doesn't need its own health exchange, has begun steps to dismantle it and transition Kentuckians to the federal health website. He also plans to scale back the Medicaid expansion, which he has called unsustainable, along the lines of Indiana's program, which imposes cost-sharing.

Speaking outside his office in the Capitol, Bevin blamed Beshear for the state’s current financial situation that has left the state’s pension system with tens of billions of dollars in unfunded liabilities.

Mac Brown, chairman of the Kentucky Republican Party, invoked this year's elections in condemning Beshear's decision.

"It defies logic that former Gov. Beshear continues to extol the virtues of Obamacare," Brown said. "I wonder how many state House Democrats will embrace the failed Obama-Beshear legacy as they pursue re-election this year."

Beshear said at his news conference that he has no political agenda and no other motive than to help Kentuckians gain and keep access to health care.

Since leaving office, Beshear said he has heard repeatedly from people who were able to get health coverage, ranging from the attendant at a bowling alley where he took his grandchildren to a worker at a coffee shop.

"I cannot sit idly by," Beshear said. "I cannot sit back and watch families like these get stripped of their health care. And I won't."

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The Save Kentucky Health website, savekyhealthcare.org, includes a petition, urging the public "to let Matt Bevin know you want smart, sensible health care policy in the state of Kentucky."

Beshear said that the expansion has helped Kentucky achieve the sharpest drop of uninsured residents in the nation. A recent Gallup poll found the rate of Kentuckians with no insurance has dropped to 7.5 percent from 20 percent.

Nearly 100,000 people have purchased health plans through kynect and another 425,000 have enrolled in Medicaid, the government health plan that was expanded under the health law to include all low-income people below 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

On Thursday, a national study found Kentucky, under the federal health law, has cut by 20,000 the number of children with no health coverage, down to 49,000 in 2014 from 69,000 the year before.

Further, Beshear cited outside studies including one by Deloitte consulting that showed the Medicaid expansion would have an overall positive impact on Kentucky's economy through 2021. The study showed the expansion would generate $3 billion in new revenue over the first 18 months and up to 12,000 jobs in the first year.

Bevin has derided such claims as "happy talk" and called the Deloitte findings "a lie, a straight up, straight out lie."

But Beshear said Bevin has produced nothing to contradict what he called a "mountain of evidence" and challenged him to do so.

"In the face of this mountain of evidence he simply says 'I don't believe it,' " Beshear said. "It is time for Gov. Bevin to step up and give us the evidence that supports his conclusions. So far we've heard no evidence because, quite honestly, there is no evidence."

Bevin, on Thursday, called studies cited by Beshear "baloney" and insisted the state can't afford the Medicaid expansion, despite Beshear's claims.

"It’s easy to make a determination from the outside," Bevin said. "I will leave that to him and whoever else to do whatever it is they choose to do with the free time they obviously have plenty of.”

The federal government pays 100 percent of the costs of those added to Medicaid through this year. After that, the federal share gradually decreases to 90 percent by 2020 and thereafter.

The federal government pays about 70 percent of the costs of some 875,000 Kentuckians in "traditional Medicaid," which covers very poor pregnant women and children, disabled people and low-income elderly in nursing homes.

Save Kentucky Healthcare's board includes some well-known public figures including his wife, Jane Beshear; Audrey Tayse Haynes, Beshear's former secretary of Health and Family Services; Crit Luallen, Beshear's former lieutenant governor; and Ben Richmond, retired president of the Louisville Urban League.

Luallen, a former state auditor who also has worked in the administration of seven governors, said she was happy to help Beshear fight to preserve the health care changes he enacted.

"This has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address the health of this state," she said. "We just can't sit back and watch this happen."

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The board also includes national political strategist Bill Hyers, who, according to his biographical information, has a history of taking on and helping win uphill political campaigns.

Save Kentucky Healthcare is a 501(c)(4) organization, a so-called "social welfare" group, which as a nonprofit may accept donations and may promote various causes. Such groups have become more prominent in recent years and range from Crossroads GPS, the conservative group co-founded by Karl Rove, to the progressive Organizing for Action.

Beshear said he didn't know yet whether Save Kentucky Health would expand into other areas.

"There are a lot of options for a 501(c)(4) and we'll make decisions as we move down the road," he said.

He said the organization is seeking donations but would not be eligible for any money left over from his inauguration fund, which must go to charity.

Bevin has said he expects to shut down kynect and transition Kentucky consumers to the federal health exchange by November.

Contact reporter Deborah Yetter at (502)582-4228 or at dyetter@courier-journal.com. Reporter Joseph Gerth contributed to this story.