I Hope You Are Feeling Healthy Kentucky: 280,000 Kentuckians to Give Up Their Current Health Insurance Policies

280,000 Kentuckians to Give Up Their Current Health Insurance Policies.

About 280,000 Kentuckians will have to give up their current insurance policies in the months ahead and enroll in alternatives that comply with the Affordable Care Act, the federal health care reform law.

Kentucky Department of Insurance spokeswoman Ronda Sloan said individual policies for about 130,000 people will be discontinued, as will small group policies for about 150,000 more.

Those affected, Sloan said, will receive discontinuation letters when their policies come up for renewal.

“This is because their current plans do not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act,” Sloan said in an emailed statement. “Instead, they are being transitioned to new ACA-compliant policies. This is not a `cancellation’ or a `termination.’ No one is losing coverage.”

Tea party activist David Adams, one of the state’s most ardent critics of the Affordable Care Act, said the number of people being forced to give up policies of their choosing is unacceptable.

“They’re likely either coming from a plan that was structured the way they liked it for catastrophic coverage or one of the Cadillac plans they liked,” Adams said. “In any event, they’re now being put into a cookie-cutter machine that is not consumer-friendly.”