Eye exams are now required for children ages 3 to 6 when first starting public school or preschool

Add eye exams to your back-to-school checklist, because state law now requires children aged 3 through 6 who are entering a public school or preschool program for the first time to have a vision exam.

Obamacare hearing highlights employers' worry and uncertainty; Yarmuth says repeal and defunding bids block needed changes

Three of Kentucky's congressmen agreement at a field hearing in Lexington Tuesday that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act needs changing, but had no a consensus on how it should be fixed.


From left, U.S. Reps. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District; Andy Barr, R-6th District; and Brett
Guthrie, R-2nd District, listen to Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tennessee, who chaired the hearing.

Business leaders by the side of the trial plus called in support of a organize, maxim the law creates challenges in support of employees, workers and the thrift.

Judge OKs Medicaid expansion and health insurance exchange

A expert upheld Gov. Steve Beshear's decisions to increase Medicaid and calibrate up the state's health-insurance swap over under federal vigor reform, but his adversaries say they will carry on to fight in quad.

Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd's two rulings mean so as to implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, through Medicaid development and the vigor swap over will carry on as intended, by the side of smallest amount in support of at the moment.

Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd

Tea Party broadminded David Adams filed a proceedings in April challenging the governor's authorized authority to create the insurance swap over, which is called Kynect and begins enrollment Oct 1, lacking at the outset seeking admiration from the General Assembly.

small businesses to help them plan for implementation of the Affordable Care Act

What will the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act mean in support of Kentucky's small businesses? A webinar  is designed to take in hand such questions almost the federal health-care reform law, often called Obamacare.

State health-insurance exchange plans to make smokers pay 40 percent more for coverage; varied interests, observers object

Supporters of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act allow touted its goal to provide vigor insurance to all Americans lacking discrimination, such as prohibiting insurers from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. But it allows them to charge smokers more in support of it, and the officials running Kentucky's health-insurance swap over plot to act precisely so as to.

Kentucky poverty rate is fifth highest in U.S., but a larger share of Kentuckians had health insurance in 2012 than in 2011

In 2012, as U.S. incomes remained lower and poverty rates higher than in 2007, the year before the recession, Kentucky poverty rates increased and one in four Kentucky children were living in poverty, according to estimates released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau. However, the percentage of Kentuckians with health insurance increased.

Kentucky had the fifth highest percentage of residents living in poverty (19.4 percent) in 2012, up from 18.8 percent in 2011. It ranked behind Mississippi (24.2 percent), New Mexico (20.8), Louisiana (19.9) and Arkansas (19.8). However, it was statistically tied with the last two states for third place because the error margin for the estimates is plus or minus 0.5 percentage points. Nationally, 2012 was the second straight year that the U.S. poverty rate had failed to improve. It remained at 15 percent, with 46.5 million people earning at or below the federal poverty line. Click here for an interactive poverty rate map from Stateline.

Ky. Health Cooperative, a new kind of insurer, could help hold down rates and reshape the health-care system

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- A little-known but recipe part of federal physical condition reform twisted a modern kind of physical condition insurance -- a company to facilitate is neither known, like Medicare and Medicaid, or run representing profit, like traditional insurance companies. And the Kentucky Health Cooperative is offering coverage this week, with the opening of the state health-insurance argument.

Kentucky is solitary of 23 states with campaign the law designated as Consumer Operated and Oriented, or "co-ops," designed to collapse for-profit companies more competitive and foothold down toll.

Janie Miller (Associated Press photo)

The campaign own acknowledged more than $2 billion in federal loans to build themselves from nick, but own been operating largely under the radar.

"The co-op encode is an exceedingly little branded part of the Affordable Care Act," Kentucky Health Cooperative boss Janie Miller held in an interview with the Kentucky Health News. "It's been very intractable to comprehend fill with to understand come again? The co-op is and why they must think."

The Co-Op provision was a following compromise in the Affordable Care Act, industrial as an alternative to the "public option" of a government-run mean. "It's the bordering issue you can probably comprehend to a known option," held Miller. “We [cooperatives] are twisted to be the non-profit options in for the most part states… specifically representing the uninsured and under-insured. ”