“Rep. Andy Barr is running away from health care – the issue that matters most to his constituents – while Democrats are running on solutions to help working families in Kentucky. Voters in Kentucky know that as long as Andy Barr is in Congress, he is never going to stop trying to rip away their coverage and increase their costs, and they are going to hold him accountable in November.” – DCCC spokesperson Jacob Peters
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In key Kentucky House race, healthcare anxieties loom large | Reuters
By Yasmeen Abutaleb and Jason Lange
April 9, 2018
Andy Barr, a Republican lawmaker representing central Kentucky, won his last three elections promising to repeal and replace Obamacare. This year, his Democratic challengers for Congress in Kentucky’s sixth district are betting that message will ring hollow.
Their hopes lie with voters like Joyell Anderson, who went for President Donald Trump in 2016 and said she generally votes Republican. This year, she is not sure who to support for Congress, but she knows what her top priority is: healthcare.
The 43-year-old stay-at-home mother, who suffers from diabetes, anxiety and depression, is one of more than 400,000 low-income Kentucky residents who obtained Medicaid coverage under President Barack Obama’s 2010 Affordable Care Act. Barr’s vote last year to repeal Obamacare scared Anderson.
In 2016, she said, her top concerns were jobs and the economy, having grown up in a family of coal miners. Now, she worries about losing Medicaid and about work requirements introduced by the state’s Republican governor.
Politicians “need to think about us ordinary people,” she said, speaking at the rural health clinic that provides her care. “(We could) lose our benefits. And then what’s going to happen?”
[…] Residents of Kentucky’s sixth district, home to both the city of Lexington and to rural towns struggling with the loss of coal jobs, have reason to focus on healthcare. People there suffer from lung disease at rates that far outstrip those in the rest of the country and drug overdose rates in parts of the district are among the highest in the nation.
Obamacare has deeply affected the area, mostly due to Medicaid’s expansion. After the health law took effect, the share of district residents with health insurance rose by 8.1 percentage points, nearly twice the national average, according to a Reuters analysis of Census Bureau data.
“Obamacare is a good thing,” said Jerry Harris, 66, who likes the job Trump is doing but describes himself as a Democrat. He relied on an Obamacare exchange plan before he was eligible for Medicare and has a daughter on Medicaid.
“I want to hear candidates talking about bringing down costs,” he said.
[…] Barr’s main Democratic challengers feature healthcare as a top concern on their campaign websites.
[…] Barr’s campaign website focuses on themes Republicans are emphasizing this year: cutting government spending, balancing the federal budget and creating jobs. His “vision” section does not mention healthcare.