More than seven in 10 Kentuckians want their state’s newly-elected Republican Gov. Matt Bevin to keep the expanded Medicaid program set up under his Democratic predecessor, according to a new poll.
Bevin promised during his campaign to pull back the program to its original size, before President Obama’s healthcare law was passed, a move that would disqualify hundreds of thousands of new enrollees. He has since walked back that aim, and says he may just add in stricter requirements for beneficiaries.
If Bevin were to stick to his campaign vows and repeal Medicaid expansion, he would face the disapproval of 72 percent of Kentucky residents, who said in a Kaiser Health News poll released Friday that the program should remain as is. Just one in five residents would prefer scaling back the program.
Even those who voted for Bevin are divided over whether to keep Medicaid expansion, as 50 percent say they’d like to scale it back and 43 percent say they want no changes. However, support for the program is much higher among voters who supported Bevin’s Democratic opponent, Attorney General Jack Conway, as 92 percent of that group says they want to keep it.
The Kaiser poll found that, as in many other southern states and the country as a whole, Kentuckians lean negative in their views of the Affordable Care Act.
But Kentucky is notable in how it has responded to the Affordable Care Act, being nearly the only southern state to expand Medicaid and set up its own insurance marketplace. Its marketplace, dubbed Kynect, has been widely viewed as one of the most successful in the country.
Bevin, who took office on Tuesday, has also said he’ll do away with the state-run marketplace and switch the state over to using the federal healthcare.gov website instead. But as with Medicaid, Kentuckians are much more supportive of programs set up under the healthcare law, including Kynect.
About half the state’s residents said they want Bevin to keep Kynect, while a quarter want to switch over to healthcare.gov. Eighteen percent of poll respondents said they aren’t sure which course they’d like Bevin to take.
