Obamacare Makes It Easy to Tell The Smart and Honest From the Stupid Liars in Eastern Kentucky

They may still hate that Ni**er in the White House, but they know their lives are better because of his socialist health care reform.

Laura Unger and Chris Kenning at the Courier:

PRESTONSBURG, Ky. – Obamacare flooded into these remote Appalachian hills last year like the War on Poverty had a half-century earlier — another government program promising to save some of America's most vulnerable citizens.

And since then, it has given many of the poor and sick a key to long-neglected health care. But it's also brought skepticism and fear, with some business owners arguing it's stunting growth in a region that can't afford another economic blow.

One year after USA Today and The Courier-Journal examined the Affordable Care Act's arrival in Floyd County, Ky., health reform has taken root in ways both surprising and expected, good and bad.

Amid predictions that bad health habits would be hard to break, scores of newly insured residents, mostly covered by Medicaid, have sought care in hospitals, mental health centers and drug treatment facilities. Providers have proved plentiful. Unreimbursed care costs are down. The county's under-65 uninsured rate is half what it was — dropping from 19 percent before the law to 10 percent at the end of last year.

Some who dismissed Obamacare because of its political associations with a president blamed for the decline of the coal industry say their opposition has softened.

Fast-food worker Melinda Watson last year echoed the law's unpopularity here — convinced it would kill jobs and create long waits for "horrible" socialized medicine. She only bought a subsidized insurance plan on the state exchange to avoid paying federal penalties. But she soon realized the benefits: going to the doctor regularly and undergoing MRIs for her epilepsy. And her employer didn't cut her hours, as she feared.

"I was really scared at first, with all the gossip," said the 41-year-old granddaughter of a coal miner, slicing tomatoes in the back of a sub shop. "But it's really helped. I've seen a lot of other people who got insurance actually using it, going to the doctor and getting their teeth fixed. Now I've got the opposite fear — that when (President Obama) goes out of office, they'll take it away."