I don't know what you mean about Kentucky. There are plenty of health insurance companies with offering on the Kentucky exchanges (Anthem BCBS, CareSource Kentucky, Humana, Aetna, and Bluegrass Family Health). And in any event, even if there truly were no insurance companies with offerings on the Kentucky exchanges, I find it very implausible that either Mitch McConnell, or Rand Paul would have claimed to be "gobsmacked." They were leaders in the fight against ACA, and they certainly claimed before passage that the law would destroy the health care industry.
Over the past few months, several major insurers have either reduced or ended their participation in the ACA exchanges. That is troubling news. However, setting aside the political feasibility, it's hardly an unsolvable problem. If the risk pool does not improve, and insurers keep losing money, then we can raise funding for the risk corridors.
To put this in perspective, Aetna, one of the largest insurers in the marketplace, is losing about $300 million. We're spending about $200 billion/year on ACA currently.
I think I am more concerned than you are that the structure of the exchanges will make them untenable in the long term but that's certainly a judgement call and we won't know the real answer for several years at least.