KENTUCKY’S
KING
lives,” Fred Buckley told viewers.
The ad ended with another worker
declaring that the senator “cares
for the working man.”
McConnell had spun a political
liability into gold, going from potential goat to savior. He flooded the
media market in Western Kentucky
with that ad. “They ran that thing
every night it seemed like to me for
two years,” Fred Buckley recalls.
Cleanup is still slow in coming.
Outside Big Bayou Creek, which
flows into the Ohio River, the Department of Energy has posted a
sign that warns of toxic sediment.
“Use of this waterway for drinking, swimming or other forms of
recreation may expose you to contamination,” it states.
In 2008, the senator thumped
his Democratic opponent by
more than 4,000 votes in McCracken County.
McCONNELL’S SAFETY NET
In Paducah, old men waited years
with cancerous growths before
they were treated. In Appalachia,
men with rotting teeth give up
waiting and yank them out with
pliers. In the southwest part of the
state, prenatal care for some expectant mothers is an emergency
room visit after their water breaks.
HUFFINGTON
08.11.13
KENTUCKY DOESN’T HAVE SO
MUCH A SAFETY NET AS
A PAINFUL WAITING LIST —
A VERY, VERY LONG ONE.
In central Kentucky, a woman
must live five months with a numb
arm before seeing a nurse at a free
clinic 45 miles from home.
Kentucky doesn’t have so much
a safety net as a painful waiting list
— a very, very long one. More than
17 percent of its citizens go without health insurance of any kind,
even as the state’s high poverty
rate results in more than 880,000
Medicaid patients. Only about 43
percent of the state buys health
insurance from the private sector.
The public health results are
what you might expect: terrible.
The state has the seventh-highest
obesity rate in the nation and, predictably, the eighth-shortest life
expectancy. Kentucky babies start
with disadvantages from their first
cry: The number of premature
births in the state has increased
over the past decade, while the
number of babies born addicted to
drugs jumped by nearly 1,100 percent between 2001 and 2011. Certain counties have infant mortality
rates higher than those of “third