"Gov. Bevin is working to take health care away from people who needed it desperately and for so long didn't have it," he said at a news conference in Louisville. "I'm not going to let that opportunity be taken away from them without a fight."
Bevin fired back a few hours later by blasting Beshear's health initiatives enacted through executive order.
“This decision, arbitrarily, unilaterally to expand Medicaid bypassing the legislature disregard completely how to pay for it and leaving that for the next governor to clean up, I am that next governor and I’m attempting to clean it up,” Bevin said.
Beshear, announcing he has formed the organization "Save Kentucky Healthcare," said he and supporters will use it to promote the changes he enacted to implement the Affordable Care Act, adding health coverage for more than 500,000 Kentuckians.
Under Beshear, a Democrat, Kentucky became the only Southern state to create its own health insurance exchange and accept the expansion of Medicaid to cover more, low-income citizens under the law also known as Obamacare.
But Bevin, a Republican, saying Kentucky doesn't need its own health exchange, has begun steps to dismantle it and transition Kentuckians to the federal health website. He also plans to scale back the Medicaid expansion, which he has called unsustainable, along the lines of Indiana's program, which imposes cost-sharing.