Democratic congressional candidate Cherlynn Stevenson, center, at lectern, talks about Medicaid cuts outside a Louisville hospital on Thursday, Aug. 7, 2025. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)
LOUISVILLE — Medicaid is becoming a flashpoint in Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District, as Democratic candidates attack President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and Republicans mirror their congressional counterparts on support for the GOP megabill.
Cherlynn Stevenson, a former Kentucky House Democratic caucus chair, was in Louisville Thursday morning to highlight how Medicaid cuts will affect patients in the state’s largest city. UofL Health said earlier this week that it would delay a South End birthing center project “indefinitely” after the cuts passed Congress earlier this summer. Stevenson was flanked by two Democratic Louisville Metro councilwomen — Jennifer Chappell and Josie Raymond — as well as Lindsay Micka, a labor and delivery nurse who was supposed to begin her orientation to work in the center on Monday.
The Louisville area speakers that joined Stevenson made it clear they hoped voters in Central Kentucky would back a candidate who will “help” the state’s lone Democrat in Congress, U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey, from the Louisville area district and a vocal critic of the law, which includes scaled back spending on Medicaid and other assistance programs.
“Let me be blunt. This is what’s on the ballot come November 2026,” Micka said. “When voters go to the polls, they need to remember their choices shape our community. They need to remember who will actually fight to protect their Medicaid and the essential care it provides here.”
UofL Health issued a Thursday afternoon statement that said “several factors have changed the health care environment and influenced this decision.” Those include a nationwide shortage of obstetric physicians and the medical liability environment in Kentucky making it difficult to recruit needed obstetricians, along with a decreasing trend in birthrates and changes to Medicaid.
While the hospital is not in the 6th Congressional district, Stevenson argued that Medicaid access is a “Kentucky issue,” adding that the major cuts will “create ripple effects across our community” as patients lose access to care and facilities are impacted.” The nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation says the legislation will cut federal spending on Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion during the next decade and lead to 11.8 million people becoming uninsured. Kentucky, KFF says, will experience the largest rural Medicaid spending cut, estimated at almost $11 billion over 10 years. The Kentucky Hospital Association has warned the legislation would eliminate 33,000 jobs as Medicaid underfunding forces hospitals to reduce services or even close.
“I think that as people wake up to what’s happening and realize the consequences that this is having, that it’s absolutely going to send people to the polls, and I absolutely think that Democrats are going to have a good year next year,” Stevenson said.
Nationwide, Democrats are focusing on Medicaid cuts under the GOP megabill as midterm elections for control of Congress heat up. Republicans narrowly have control of the House and Senate, following the 2024 elections with President Donald Trump at the top of the ticket. Democrats have their eyes on the 6th Congressional District, currently held by Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Barr who is running for Kentucky’s open U.S. Senate seat and backed the megabill. The district has a history of alternating between political parties.
Rep. Ryan Dotson, R-Winchester. (LRC Public Information)
Like Stevenson, two other Democratic primary candidates in the 6th Congressional District — former federal prosecutor Zach Dembo and former Lexington Councilman David Kloiber — have highlighted Medicaid cuts on the campaign trail. Neither of their campaigns returned emailed requests for comment Thursday morning. The primary is in May.
One Republican candidate in the race, state Rep. Ryan Dotson, of Winchester, told the Kentucky Lantern that Medicaid won’t be as big of an issue as Democrats are making it out to be. He said he was supportive of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, adding that Medicaid was “not sustainable the way that it was” and needed parameters like work requirements to ensure those resources were going to “the poor, the disabled and the elderly, not for the able-bodied.” Dotson was also supportive of the law’s eligibility removal of Medicaid for people who do not have permanent legal status.
“I think the Democrats will take and twist anything they can to their advantage, to use it as a sticking point, to do fear-mongering and to get people off guard, because a lot of the stuff they say is untrue,” Dotson said.
Dotson also predicted that Democrats would not be able to flip the 6th Congressional District and that “the Republicans and the moderate Democrats will stand together.”
Dr. Ralph Alvarado, another Republican candidate vying to represent the district, told the Lantern during the Fancy Farm Picnic in West Kentucky last weekend that he would like to improve health care going forward and that the Republican megabill would “help Medicaid be used for the people that it was intended for” and make it a “more efficient system.”
“There’s got to be more changes to come if we want to make it sustainable for the future,” he said.
Alvarado is a former state senator and was Tennessee’s health commissioner. His campaign did not return a request for comment for this story Thursday morning. The campaign for a third Republican candidate, state Rep. Deanna Gordon, of Richmond, did not return an emailed request for comment Thursday.
