As governor, he expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and launched the Kentucky Health Benefit Exchange, which together reduced the state’s uninsured rate from 20 percent to 9 percent. Beshear first joined Stites and Harbison in 1987 and supervised the firm’s Lexington office until his first gubernatorial term. Prior to this, he was Kentucky’s lieutenant governor from 1983 to 1987 and attorney general of Kentucky from 1979 to 1983. Beshear served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1973 to 1979.