KENTUCKY’S
KING
love at the federal level. He has
sought to prevent disabled children of legal immigrants from
receiving benefits and has been
a fierce opponent of the Children’s Health Insurance Program,
which provides medical coverage for families who make too
much to qualify for Medicaid but
can’t afford private insurance. It
is no shock that his opposition to
Obamacare has been unwavering,
all the way down to Medicaid expansion in his own state, which
will give more than 350,000 Kentuckians access to the program.
But at least in Kentucky, there
is what might be called the McConnell option. Some of his federal appropriations went to health
care services for the state’s most
vulnerable citizens. And unlike
Obamacare, his earmarks frequently provided direct government services without a privatesector intermediary.
In the 2005 and 2008 federal
budgets, McConnell and his staff
recognized the rotting teeth and
premature birth problems in their
state, and funded a program whose
research saw a linkage between the
two. The University of Kentucky
received a total of $1.78 million for
the program — a drop in the buck-
HUFFINGTON
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et, but, Schweri says, an easy sell.
“Staff picked up on it right
away,” he recalls. “Senator McConnell has really, really good
staffers. They are very knowledgeable. It never ceases to amaze
me how clued in they are to the
state of Kentucky.”
The earmark funding trickled
down to the Baptist Women’s Clinic’s pilot prenatal care program,
known as “CenteringPregnancy,”
which targeted at-risk, soon-to-be
moms. Along with providing sonograms and routine care, nurses
and midwives moderated group
sessions that went beyond breathing exercises and swaddling techniques. They found room to address what so much of Kentucky’s
social services could not.
The expectant moms talked
about not having a place to live,
worries about completing high
school, and living under the boot
of abusive men. Some women
confessed they couldn’t afford
transportation and had to walk to
the sessions.
“It will be the heat of the summer, and you will have moms that
are walking,” says LeAnn Langston, a registered nurse and a nurse
manager with the clinic. “We’ve
had women pushing strollers in
the heat of the summer.” After
bonding with each other at the
sessions, groups formed carpools.