Louisville Medicine Volume 62, Issue 3 | Page 27

Gwenda: We’ve spoken to reporters from states who didn’t expand, and Carrie has said many times she’s been happy to go testify to the success Kentucky has had. Carrie: I believe Governor Beshear has spoken with several Governors more personally. I’m surprised more states haven’t been open to federal funding. Carrie: Based on the analysis, I think the program was kind of a no-brainer. With the revenue it’s going to generate and the jobs it’s going to create, it’s just a win-win-win for everyone involved. A report regarding Massachusetts state health care in the Annals of Internal Medicine indicated that 830 people would need insurance coverage to save one life per year. With Kentucky’s higher use of tobacco and rate of obesity, do you feel the measure of the state’s insurance benefits will be similar? Carrie: It’s going to take some time, but we believe long term the health status of Kentuckians will be improved. As you know we’re at the bottom of everything, smoking, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease. Since these individuals will now have health insurance coverage, they’ll be able to seek preventive care, have diagnostic testing, have prescription drugs filled. Just by having access to health care coverage, people taking better care of themselves will improve the overall health status of Kentucky. But we think it’s going to take a while before we see it in the statistics. It’s not going to happen overnight. Gwenda: It might be difficult to draw conclusions from that study, because our population size and make-up is so different from that of Massachusetts. We have many state-specific health challenges. So we rolled out the Kentucky Health Now Initiative a few months ago to build on the fact that more people have insurance. It’s designed to set some goals for people, target strategies to reduce the rate of smoking, cancers, and the rate of not having insurance. Gwenda: I think a lot of our job over the next few years will be teaching people how to use their insurance who’ve never had coverage before. We do expect that our health statistics may get worse before they get better, just because of early diagnosis and treatment. There are a lot of people who were pre-diabetic or diabetic who didn’t know and will now find out. Carrie: There have been great stories in the press about individuals who actually have coverage now and can have x-rays, t