Congressman John Yarmuth
Wednesday, July 30, 2014 2:32 pm

Mr. Speaker, my home state of Kentucky has been a national model for how the Affordable Care Act can succeed. Through Kynect, our state exchange, more than 413,000 Kentuckians have gotten health insurance – nearly 310,000 of them for the first time.

These two maps show how health reform has reduced the rate of the uninsured in the Commonwealth’s 120 counties. The orange and red in the top map show counties with pre-Affordable Care Act uninsured rates of 14 percent to more than 20 percent. Some of the most impoverished areas, such as Eastern Kentucky, also had the highest uninsured rates.

The bottom map shows Kentucky today, under the health care law. Only one county still has an uninsured rate of more than 14 percent. In three counties in the heart of Appalachia, the uninsured rate plummeted from more than 20 percent to less than 5 percent, as shown in blue.

Mr. Speaker, overall, in just six months, the Affordable Care Act reduced the total number of uninsured Kentuckians by nearly half. Behind every number, and behind every red county turned blue or green, are the stories of a person or family getting the health care they need. That’s success by any standard – but most importantly, Kentucky’s standards.