Huffington Magazine Issue 61 | Page 71

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