Kentucky's Obamacare Website Works, But Word Of Mouth Is What Sells It

[Playinghardball]

WASHINGTON -- When she logged onto Kentucky’s health insurance exchange website, Kimberly Cates did not have the problems that have plagued so many Americans trying to sign up for insurance under Obamacare. She browsed plans and compared them, and checked whether she was eligible for subsidies. Yet when it came time to actually enroll, she hesitated.

Cates has seen firsthand the consequences of not having coverage. For more than a decade, she has worked as a certified medical assistant in a family clinic in Paint Lick, Ky., that treats the uninsured and indigent. The irony is lost on no one that the clinic cannot afford to offer Cates health care benefits.

For years, insurance companies have eyed Cates' 5-foot, 245-pound stature and used it to either deny coverage or to offer her plans costing well beyond her means. As a result, the 40-year-old mother of three has been putting critical doctor visits and tests on her Visa. In February, she borrowed from an aunt to pay for her hysterectomy. A few years' health care bills added up to at least $15,000 -- more than half her yearly salary at the clinic.

Four days before Kentucky's health exchange, known as Kynect, launched on Oct. 1, Cates and her husband, Rodney, who collects disability due to a factory work injury, filed for bankruptcy. Now Cates was browsing the exchange website from the living room of a small apartment they found after losing their home. Cates and her husband had lived in an old farmhouse that had been in the family for generations, surrounded with flower gardens she tended. She needed Kynect to work and believed that it

More at: WASHINGTON -- When she logged onto Kentucky’s health insurance exchange website, Kimberly Cates did not have the problems that have plagued so many Americans trying to sign up for insurance under Obamacare. She browsed plans and compared them, and checked whether she was eligible for subsidies. Yet when it came time to actually enroll, she hesitated.

Cates has seen firsthand the consequences of not having coverage. For more than a decade, she has worked as a certified medical assistant in a family clinic in Paint Lick, Ky., that treats the uninsured and indigent. The irony is lost on no one that the clinic cannot afford to offer Cates health care benefits.

For years, insurance companies have eyed Cates' 5-foot, 245-pound stature and used it to either deny coverage or to offer her plans costing well beyond her means. As a result, the 40-year-old mother of three has been putting critical doctor visits and tests on her Visa. In February, she borrowed from an aunt to pay for her hysterectomy. A few years' health care bills added up to at least $15,000 -- more than half her yearly salary at the clinic.

Four days before Kentucky's health exchange, known as Kynect, launched on Oct. 1, Cates and her husband, Rodney, who collects disability due to a factory work injury, filed for bankruptcy. Now Cates was browsing the exchange website from the living room of a small apartment they found after losing their home. Cates and her husband had lived in an old farmhouse that had been in the family for generations, surrounded with flower gardens she tended. She needed Kynect to work and believed that it

More at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/05/kentucky-obamacare-website_n_4214629.html