Saturday, February 10, 2018

Kentucky Gov. Bevin attacks 'outside liberal group' ... that's from Kentucky

By Joan McCarter 
Tuesday Feb 06, 2018 · 12:59 PM EST

Kentucky Republican Gov. Matt Bevin became the first to impose new Trump-approved Medicaid rules that allow the state to impose a work requirement on recipients, a restriction that is in conflict with the federal Medicaid statutes.

While the federal Medicaid law allows states to obtain waivers for pilot programs, those programs have to further the objective of Medicaid: providing health coverage to people who can't afford it. So aided by advocacy organizations, a group of 15 Medicaid enrollees is suing Bevin. Bevin's response? He's being attacked by outsiders.

"I mean, they're not even from Kentucky," Bevin said at a news conference at the Health and Family Services Cabinet in Frankfort. "I mean, this is just the kind of silliness, they get a few people who live in Kentucky to sort of be their face, but based on the comments made by those people, it's clear they're being used and it's a shame. But this is what outside liberal groups do. They think they're going to come in and make sport of Kentucky. Good luck to them. They'll lose."
Speaking from her office in downtown Louisville, attorney Anne Marie Regan, of the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, scoffed at Bevin's assertion.

"We are a Kentucky-based nonprofit organization," she said. "We've been in operation since before 1980. We represent the interests of low-income folks."

The Kentucky Equal Justice Center is representing 15 Medicaid recipients from Kentucky and is working with two national groups as co-counsel, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Regan said.

Bevin hopes to kick 95,000 Kentuckians off of Medicaid. He doesn't need any outside group—which the Kentucky Equal Justice Center is most definitely not—to come into the state to make him look bad.

Source
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/2/6/1739222/-Bevin-attacks-outside-liberal-group-that-s-from-Kentucky

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