Some Kentucky Lawmakers Want to Gut Your Health Insurance. It's Time to Fight Back and Ask Them to Scrap the Cap.
HB 500 — the House's proposed state budget — would cap what the state pays toward public employee health coverage, triggering a funding shortfall that gets passed directly onto workers and retirees. According to Kentucky's own Personnel Cabinet, that means a 78% premium hike for 310,506 teachers, bus drivers, state troopers, social workers, retirees, and their families.
What’s Happening
The Stakes
This Isn't an Abstract Policy. It's Money Out of Your Pocket.
Kentucky's lawmakers have already denied raises for years and gutted pensions. Now, the House budget would cut health coverage for the very people who teach our kids, keep our streets safe, and serve our communities every day.
The Personnel Cabinet has confirmed: HB 500 creates a $202 million shortfall by 2028 — and every dollar of it gets handed to workers and retirees through higher premiums, steeper deductibles, and slashed benefits.
And it doesn't stop at premiums. The Personnel Cabinet warns KEHP could be forced to increase copays and deductibles, remove treatments from coverage, and eliminate certain drugs entirely.
Kentucky already faces a teacher shortage. Cutting benefits by $400–$535 a month will drive more educators and public servants out of the profession — and make it nearly impossible to recruit new ones.
This is a manufactured crisis. Lawmakers cut income taxes that overwhelmingly benefited wealthy Kentuckians — and now claim there's not enough money to fund public employee health care. Kentucky's public servants deserve better than that.
The Pledge
Some lawmakers say they oppose "HB 500 in its current form" — but as the budget process plays out, bill numbers change and language gets shuffled. We're cutting through the gamesmanship. Every member of the General Assembly is being asked one simple question: Will you pledge to vote NO on any budget that shifts health insurance costs onto workers and retirees?
We’ll track their answers.