Federal 100: Carrie Banahan
Name: Carrie Banahan
Title: Executive Director
Agency: Office of the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange
Connecting Kynect. Kentucky successfully launched an online health benefit exchange to support coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Dubbed Kynect, the state's website worked as advertised, unlike the buggy HealthCare.gov, and much of the credit goes to Banahan, a civil servant with more than three decades of experience in health policy and insurance regulation. As the chief health policy adviser to Kentucky's governor, Banahan spearheaded Kynect's rollout with a focus on core functionality and added a mobile app in 2014 to help Kentuckians get enrollment assistance on their smartphones.