I lost my job back in late October. The only bit of good news I have received recently is that I do get unemployment, and because of my situation, I actually qualified under the ACA for the Medicaid expansion in KY. Starting Jan 1st, I will get Medicaid, so I am grateful to Obama and those who pushed for expansion of Medicaid. Otherwise, I'd have to pay over 500 dollars a month for COBRA. One thing that I did notice while I was signing up for Medicaid is that the state of Kentucky is doing some due diligence and also signing people up to register to vote.
It was the registering people to vote that I wanted to bring to everyone's attention.
I will be the first to complain about the moribund Democratic Party in KY. I could go on and on about what is wrong with the state Democratic Party. However, Governor Beshear has done a good job with the health insurance exchange, and they do ask while you are online if you are registered to vote.
Now, I have been registered to vote for what seems like a century or more, so I did check the box that I was already registered. This is probably a small bug with the website, but the state of Kentucky went ahead and sent me out a form asking again do I want to sign up to vote with the other paperwork to verify that I signed up for health insurance. Possibly a bug or redundancy in the system, but I'm glad that the state does that.
What does surprise me is that the Republicans are not screaming bloody murder about this aspect of the ACA in KY. I suppose the Republicans are too busy spreading the rumor that the dread Obamacare enforces those who sign up to have a chip implanted in their arms to scream about voter registration efforts. Bigotry and scare tactics seem to be the MO of Kentucky Republicans with regards to the ACA.
But I don't know how many of those signing up under the ACA are unregistered voters. All I do know is that there were 640.000 Kentuckians without health insurance before the exchange was established. As of tomorrow, approximately 100,000 Kentuckians will have signed up for health insurance. Even the state though does not believe that all the uninsured will sign up in the first six months, but if the trend continues, probably over 350,000 will be signed up by the end of March 2014.