During Monday night's debate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) said that ObamaCare could be repealed entirely — while still allowing Kentucky to maintain its Kynect health insurance exchange, a program that is a part of ObamaCare and its system of mandates, subsidies, and state insurance markets.
"Policy experts have questioned the feasibility of preserving the popular state exchange while also repealing the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which set it up and similar exchanges around the country," The Hill reports. So here's McConnell during the debate:
Kentucky Kynect is a website. It was paid for by a two-hundred-and-some-odd-million-dollar grant from the federal government. The website can continue but in my view the best interests of the country would be achieved by pulling out ObamaCare root and branch. [McConnell, via The Hill]
The twist here is that Kynect has been a success in Kentucky. But at the same time, President Obama is very unpopular in the state, which he lost with only 38 percent of the vote in 2012.
Monday's event was the only debate that will be held between McConnell and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky's secretary of state, whom McConnell has been narrowly leading in most polls.