Governor's Ban on 'Non-essential' Medical Care Makes Victims of Those With Medical Conditions

Left: Ken Kearns after casting his Electoral College vote, Right: Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear

Lexington, KY — This past Friday, I stood in a small coffee shop surrounded by 75 people who risked arrest in defiance of Governor Andy Beshear’s orders, so they could help cover the medical bills of one of Governor Beshear’s victims, Ken Kearns.

Of all the Republican activists in the state of Kentucky, perhaps none is better known and more traveled than Ken Kearns. For decades he traveled county to county, rounding up support for the super-minority Republican Party in deep blue Kentucky.

Those efforts finally came to fruition in November 2016, when Democrats still held more than 50% of voter registration. Republicans took control of the Kentucky State House for the first time in 90 years, but for Ken Kearns, these results were bittersweet.

It was around that same time that Kearns started experiencing nose bleeds at the end of his 2016 campaign for State House. Thinking nothing of it, he sought out medical treatment to get this annoyance under control, only to discover that he had nasal cancer.

In the four years since, Kearns has undergone over 30 radiation treatments and has had his nasal passages, including his nose, removed in surgery.

Only after the surgery did Kearns learn that he only had a 5% survival rate going under the knife.

Like clockwork, year after year, Ken Kearns would recover from surgery from the previous month, just in time to make his surgery that month.

He had a date with the scalpel multiple times a year, always with a determination to see this through the end.

That was until March 2020, when Governor Beshear took it upon himself to ban non-essential medical procedures, and everything came to a halt.

As 15 days to “stop the spread” turned to ten months, Ken Kearns went from having a minor pinhole opening under his eye to an ever-expanding hole the size of a dime.

Doctors grew concerned that he may lose his vision, and yet because surgery wasn’t “Andy Beshear essential,” surgery kept being delayed.

When it was clear Kearns was losing ground in his miraculous recovery, Ken’s doctors went to bat for him, declaring his surgery essential and demanding he gets an operating room.

Now, doctors are scrambling to simply get Ken back to where he was ten months ago when all this started because one elected official from an opposing party decided that he wasn’t worthy of medical care.

In many ways, doctors find themselves starting over, with Ken being left to pick up the costs of the setbacks imposed on him by government bureaucrats.

So it came to be that this past Friday, 75+ people crammed into Brewed Café in Lexington, KY, to defy the Governor and help fundraise for Ken Kearns. In attendance were two members of the Kentucky House of Representatives and a Kentucky Senator, who urged the crowd to open their hearts, to open their wallets, and to defy the Governor by giving generously to Ken Kearns.

Ken Kearns, pre-surgery, and Congressman Thomas Massie

Even the owner of Brewed, Andrew Cooperrider, gave a speech to the crowd and donated snacks, soda, coffee and beer to the cause.

I, myself, also rose to encourage others to join me in making whatever contribution they can to Ken Kearns, and I encourage our readers to participate in the GoFundMe campaign as well.

In addressing the crowd, Ken wanted to thank everyone for coming out. He also wanted to remind us that he’s lucky in that he has a voice, and there are hundreds of other people suffering at the hands of overreaching bureaucrats all over the country.

Additionally, he spoke about the heartbreak he sees in the eyes of the doctors and nurses he deals with weekly, that he can see their love turn to despair as the government keeps them from doing their job in the name of “saving lives.”

In a note of optimism, he stated that he looked forward to a day where he could once again hug the people that saved his life once and continue that fight to this day.

Ken reminded all of us in attendance that we must continue to fight for those the government has harmed and those who continue to have no voice.