As part of a fact-checking series in the Lexington Herald-Leader, John Cheves reports in detail about what the two major party candidates for Central Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District would do about healthcare access and affordability.
Cheves reports that former federal prosecutor Zach Dembo, a Democrat, recently laid out a five-point healthcare plan at a news conference in Paris that includes:
- Reversing the roughly $1 trillion in spending cuts to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program over the next decade that are part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
- Restoring the premium subsidies that Congress let expire Jan. 1 that made insurance less expensive for people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
- Requiring price transparency for medical procedures so patients will know in advance exactly what they’ll be expected to pay.
- Authorizing the federal government’s Medicaid and Medicare programs to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower prescription drug prices across the board.
- Adding a “public option,” a government-backed health insurance plan to compete with private insurers for people who either don’t like their employer’s plan or don’t have access to an employer’s plan.
Republican Ralph Alvarado, a Winchester doctor and former Kentucky state senator, did not respond to requests for comment for this story, Cheves reports.
However, Cheves goes on to report that Alvarado, being a doctor, has had plenty to say about healthcare, writing that while he was in the Kentucky General Assembly and working as a medical director for “several low-rated nursing homes,” he sponsored bills to make it harder for people to sue for malpractice.
Further, Cheves reports that Alvarado describes himself as a Make America Healthy Again advocate; has said he supports vaccinations, but does not think people should be forced to take them; supports healthcare price transparency; supports greather use of “concierge medicine”; and has said he talked to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. about states having more control over their healthcare spending.
