Blame Game Is Driving Up Health Insurance Costs.
WHITFIELD: Some health insurance companies now saying it's the uncertainty with the new health care bill that's driving up their premiums. Blue Cross-Blue Shield of North Carolina is now predicting a 23 percent rate hike. And this is happening as criticism continues over President Trump's medicaid plan which could cause millions to lose their health care benefits. CNN's Miguel Marquez traveled to Kentucky, a state Trump won by 30 points for a look at what could happen there.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Open that for me.</s>MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Doctor Anthony Young said hazard's constants healthcare is in motion. Today he employs 50 people, his practice expanding.</s>DR. ANTHONY YOUNG: I would 70 percent of our economy is driven by healthcare.</s>MARQUEZ: Do you think 70 percent high -- I mean that's -- just -- you're living that's what you see?</s>YOUNG: Yes. That's just like an adding (inaudible) about this healthcare is the driving economic force in our area.</s>MARQUEZ: Kentucky, which expanded medicaid and created its own insurance exchange under Obamacare, has seen both patients and the healthcare workers who serve them skyrocket.</s>DR. JONATHAN PIERCY, UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY'S CENTER FOR RURAL HEALTH AND HAZARD: It takes a big team to run a clinic like this.</s>MARQUEZ: Doctor Jonathan Piercy at University of Kentucky's Center for Rural Health in Hazard trains future doctors.</s>PIERCY: We've seen a lot of clinics open lately. We've seen some new clinics that have come around. We've just built a huge new wing on the hospital.</s>MARQUEZ: All of that comes with jobs, jobs now at risk if the Obamacare Medicaid expansion is eliminated by 2020 as Congress is now considering. Since 2014, as states expanded Medicaid, some 1.1 million jobs were created nationwide. Eastern Kentucky, Coal Country, the 5th Congressional District stands to lose more jobs than any other district in the entire country.</s>UINDENTIFIED MALE: By one study we would lose 20,000 jobs in the 5th Congressional District.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 20,000 jobs.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 20,000 jobs, which is about double the number of jobs we've lost in the coal industry. It would be the other shoe to drop on the economy of Eastern Kentucky.</s>MARQUEZ (on camera): How good is it to be a nurse in Eastern Kentucky right now.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean if you love taking care of people and that kind of environment, it's really good. I mean there's no -- like I said there's not a shortage of jobs.</s>MARQUEZ (voice over): Nurses in high demand here and well paid, evidence of a thriving healthcare industry everywhere. This mall, once a Walmart -- now a super-sized medical center.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're constantly growing.</s>MARQUEZ: Kentucky River community care now has 70 facilities, has hired more than 150 employees in the last few years and can't expand fast enough. How big a piece of that is, is the fact that they can pay for it with Medicaid?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Eighty percent. I mean because, you know, for our programs we have to look at revenue to expand.</s>MARQUEZ: Health care jobs on the rise here, ending the Medicaid expansion, another devastating blow. Miguel Marquez, CNN, Hazard, Kentucky.</s>WHITFIELD: And the next hour of the CNN NEWSROOM starts right after this.