In a report for PBS, KET’s Renee Shaw looks at the influence of health-care reform on the U.S. Senate race

Kentucky is a state “where both the economy and
health care poll as high issues and where the state’s exchange under the
health care law … has a very different reputation than the
law does when it’s called Obamacare,” KET‘s Renee Shaw reports in a segment for PBS “NewsHour.”

Courier-Journal Political Writer Joe Gerth explained the disconnect for the national audience: “Five letters, O-B-A-M-A. You have to look at the polling on Obama. His
favorability rating in Kentucky is somewhere around 29 percent. He’s not
liked. People don’t like his policies. They don’t like him personally.
And that’s played a huge role in why Obamacare is viewed so negatively.”

Shaw interviews small-business owner Charles Howard of Chaplin, who doesn’t like the law, and Kendell Nash of Louisville, who does. Shaw concludes, “Kentucky is full of strong feelings on the health care law, but it’s not
clear how much those will affect the election. Like much of the nation,
the state is getting ready for the next round of open enrollment on its
health care exchange. That will be the next test of the health care law
here. Enrollment starts two weeks after the midterm election.”