Life after Jan. 1: Kentucky clinic offers early glimpse at realities of health-care law

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/life-after-jan-1-kentucky-clinic-offers-early-glimpse-at-realities-of-health-care-law/2014/02/01/a25c506a-8ad1-11e3-916e-e01534b1e132_story.html

Life after Jan. 1: Kentucky clinic offers early glimpse at realities of health-care law
By Stephanie McCrummen, Published: February 1

in Breathitt County, Ky. — The envelopes began arriving in December across eastern Kentucky, one of the sickest and poorest corners of the country.

“Dear member . . . We want you to be healthy . . .” read the letter to Mary Combs, and with it came a plastic card representing the first insurance she ever had: a Medicaid plan made possible by the nation’s new health-care law, effective Jan. 1.

Nine days into the new year, the 41-year-old call-center worker headed to the health clinic on Highway 15. She saw a doctor about her chronic stomach ulcers, had her blood drawn for tests and collected referrals for all the specialists she had been told she needed but could never afford.

The next week, she saw a neurologist, who found lesions on her brain and prescribed medicine for the cluster headaches, which are also called “suicide headaches” for pain that is far more intense than a migraine and which Combs had been treating with an alcohol-soaked cloth wrapped around her head. She lined up a gynecologist for abnormal uterine bleeding and a hematologist for anemia and an ophthalmologist for an affliction she called “arthritis of the eye,” which was diagnosed on one of the rare occasions she decided to see a specialist, a $250 visit her husband paid for by selling his lawn mower.

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1. And her senior senator would like to undo

all this.

[trublu992]

2. Its going to be interesting to see whether they are

going to show up to the polls in support of their healthcare