Kentucky's health exchange plays big in Senate race

The state's online insurance marketplace has proven popular, creating difficulties for the Republican incumbent, Sen. Mitch McConnell, who has vowed to repeal Obamacare , and giving a boost to Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes.

The Washington Post: Why The Debate Over Kentucky's 'Healthcare.Gov' Site Matters
Kentucky's Republican senior senator, Mitch McConnell, is taking a bit of heat over a Web site. As part of his closely-watched race against Democrat Alison Grimes for that Senate seat, the Senate minority leader said Monday night that while he'd like to see Obamacare scrubbed from the face of the Earth, he's fine with the continued existence of Kynect, Kentucky's unfortunately named but nonetheless popular health insurance exchange site (Scola,10/15).

The Associated Press: Hillary Clinton Talks Health Care At Grimes Event
Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Kentucky voters to send Democratic candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes to the Senate to protect the state's 521,000 Kentuckians who have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Incumbent Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell has vowed to repeal the law, which expanded the Medicaid program and provides discounted insurance plans for people with lower incomes. Clinton never mentioned McConnell by name, but said Grimes would work to "build it (the law), make it better and fix what's wrong with it" (Beam, 10/15).

The Washington Post's Fact Checker: Mitch McConnell's Puzzling Claims On Insurance In Kentucky, Post-Obamacare
Many readers requested a fact check of McConnell's Obamacare statements in his debate with the Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes. It's a very interesting set of statements, and we have puzzled over them till our puzzler was sore. McConnell has some difficulty with the Obamacare issue because the Kentucky version, known as Kynect, has been a huge success. About half a million Kentuckians signed up for health insurance, many receiving it for the first time. Fewer than 100,000 joined private insurance plans; that means the bulk of the population joined Medicaid, which was greatly expanded under the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare (Kessler, 10/16).