FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - Kentucky’s high performance for health care sign-ups through its state-run website has earned Gov. Steve Beshear a White House invitation to attend President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech.
Beshear, a strong supporter of Obama’s health care law, was among the guests sitting with first lady Michelle Obama when the president delivered the annual speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night.
“Kentucky’s not the most liberal part of the country. That’s not where I got my highest vote totals,” Obama said, drawing light laughter in the House chamber and a grin from Beshear as he began to praise the governor. “But he’s like a man possessed when it comes to covering his commonwealth’s families.
“They are our neighbors and our friends,’” Obama quoted the governor as saying. “’They are people we shop and go to church with. Farmers out on the tractors. Grocery clerks. They are people who go to work every morning praying they don’t get sick. No one deserves to live that way.’”
Many states refused to set up their own online insurance marketplaces, a centerpiece of the health care law. Those states shifted the task to the federal website, which hit a series of embarrassing early snags in signing up people for health coverage.
Beshear, however, embraced the opportunity for a Bluegrass state site, even as the state’s Republican U.S. senators, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, pressed for the health care law’s repeal.
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FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - Kentucky Republicans and Democrats wrapped up candidate recruitment for this year’s election on Tuesday and set their sights on settling a crowded ballot, topped by a high-profile U.S. Senate race and the struggle for control of the state House of Representatives.
As the candidate filing deadline passed, both sides sounded ready to press their case to voters, who will endure a blizzard of campaign ads, speeches, yard signs and canvassing in coming months.
All 100 state House seats are on the November ballot, as well as half the 38 state Senate seats. All six U.S. House incumbents from Kentucky drew challengers.
Rounding out the long ballot will be contests for judgeships as well as city and county offices.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pursuit of a sixth term will garner the most attention.
McConnell drew four GOP challengers in the May 20 primary, including Louisville businessman Matt Bevin. The Democratic front-runner is Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, who has three opponents in the primary.
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FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - The Kentucky Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would count computer programming classes toward fulfilling foreign-language requirements in public schools.
The goal is to enhance programming skills, enabling more Kentucky students to land high-paying jobs in the growing computer industry, said Sen. David Givens, the bill’s sponsor.
“Those opportunities are there,” the Greensburg Republican said, noting that an estimated 1 million programming jobs will be available by 2020.
Kentucky isn’t preparing enough students to acquire the skills to fill those programming jobs, Givens said.
The measure cleared the Senate on a 28-7 vote. The opponents remained silent during the discussion of the bill, which now goes to the House.
Expanding the definition of foreign languages to include computer programming would help more students squeeze programming courses into their schedules, Givens said.
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A southern Kentucky hospital will pay $16.5 million to the federal government to settle claims that it submitted false or fraudulent Medicare and Kentucky Medicaid claims for completing surgeries to implant unnecessary coronary stents and pacemakers and perform coronary artery bypass grafting.
The agreement released Tuesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Lexington covers a period from Jan. 1, 2008, through Aug. 31, 2011 at Saint Joseph Health System, which runs Saint Joseph London Hospital. The agreement also covers allegations that the hospital, which serves a primarily rural swath of counties near the Kentucky-Tennessee state line, violated a federal anti-kickback law by entering into a sham agreement with a clinic in the area.
These agreements served as an inducement for the doctors to refer patients to Saint Joseph. Prosecutors say Medicare and Medicaid are not responsible to pay claims that resulted from this improper financial relationship between the doctors and the hospital.
U.S. Attorney Kerry Harvey said a related criminal investigation into the arrangement and a whistleblower lawsuit are continuing.
“They were doing certain interventional procedures … that would not have justified payment,” Harvey told The Associated Press.
Saint Joseph London President Greg Gerard said in a statement that the hospital agreed to the settlement without an admission of wrongdoing to avoid the expense and uncertainty of litigation. Gerard said the doctors involved no longer practice at the hospital.
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