Vice President Mike Pence appealed for total GOP congressional support for a White House-backed health overhaul during a brief visit Saturday to Kentucky, where the Republican governor and junior senator are among the plan’s skeptics.
He said President Donald Trump would lean on House Republicans — including two Kentucky lawmakers in the audience, Representatives Andy Barr and Brett Guthrie — to vote to replace former President Barack Obama’s law.
Pence’s trip was part of an effort to reassure conservatives who have raised objections to the House plan. In a sign of the high stakes, Pence’s motorcade passed a long line of demonstrators who chanted, “Save our care.”
GOP Governor Matt Bevin has said his state cannot afford to pay for a growing Medicaid program, which has cost Kentucky millions more than initially expected and now covers more than 25 percent of the state’s population. He has dismantled Kentucky’s state-based exchange but indicated he would not favor eliminating the federal health insurance exchange.
Democrats have praised Beshear’s use of the health care law to drive down the state’s uninsured rate and his smooth rollout of kynect, the state-run exchange, even while Obama struggled with the national release of healthcare.gov.
Source: AP
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