By Kyle Whitmire
Katie Britt still thinks you’re stupid.
In May, the Alabama senator introduced a bill that she says would protect IVF. Co-sponsored with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the bill would defund Medicaid in any state that banned the fertility treatment.
Let’s think about what that means for a moment.
In Alabama, Medicaid covers nearly half of all childbirths.
According to data from the Alabama Medicaid Agency, as many as one in four Alabamians will rely on Medicaid to pay for health care in a given year.
And even without Medicaid expansion (still haven’t done that yet), Alabama hospitals and medical service providers depend on Medicaid to stay in business. Defunding it would drop a neutron bomb on Alabama’s healthcare industry. If Medicaid were to disappear, it would hurt insured people, too.
Inevitably, people would die.
And because of what? Dumb elected officials who took lawmaking to the extremes?
As I said earlier this year, Britt’s bill claims to “protect” IVF but she’s holding poor people hostage. That was in May. Her bill didn’t move.
This week, Britt moved for passage of her bill again, with similar results. Then she attacked Democrats for blocking the measure and then accused them of staging a “show vote” for their own bill protecting IVF.
Talk about every accusation being a confession.
Britt’s bill has been a political tool and nothing more, but it’s worth our attention, nonetheless. It does two things.
First, it gives Republicans a shield to hide behind when Democrats rightfully claim to be on the side of fertility treatments. Most folks get that.
But second — and this is something I’ll be coming back to in the future — is that it protects States’ Rights.
Congress could pass a law telling states they have to protect IVF services, but if Republicans accede to that, then it opens the door to other things — everything from reproductive rights to environmental protection.
When the Dobbs decision came down, many understood it as an attack on reproductive freedom. I don’t want to diminish the importance of that nor subordinate it to other issues, but there’s more happening here than just the right of women to control their bodies.
The United States Supreme Court sent a message, and one it reiterated when it overturned the Chevron doctrine: States’ Rights are back.
And we in Alabama should be familiar with what that means.
Speaking of health care (and stupid) … an update
Last month I wrote about my sticker shock at the pharmacy drive-thru, where I got PAXLOVID (all-caps are Pfizer’s and not mine) — after I gave them nearly $400.
When the column ran, a few helpful readers reached out to tell me about a rebate program through Pfizer that ostensibly refunds the cost over what my insurance covers. One of those helpful readers was a public relations representative from Pfizer itself.
Had I been fair when I said the pharmaceutical giant had drawn a new class distinction in America — between people who can afford medicine and those who can’t?
Keep reading.
Eager for a little participatory journalism, but also because I wanted my damn money back, I decided to give it a shot and see what would happen.
I went to the website the Pfizer rep kindly linked to in her email, I downloaded the form, which you can find here, and I carefully followed the instructions on the form, which you should read for your own amusement.
Per the form’s instructions, I included the “pharmacy receipt” and not the “cash register receipt,” which the form says is “not valid” (The italics and underscore are theirs, not mine), and I circled all the things the instructions told me to circle.
I put the form with the receipt in the mail because you have to do it that way unless you still have a fax machine, and why use technology when we still have stamps?
Last week, I got a reply.
Denied.
The reason? “Please provide proof of payment (receipt from pharmacy that shows you paid) for reimbursement to be issued by check.”
(Bold text and parentheses are theirs, not mine.)
That’s right. Pfizer denied me a rebate because I didn’t include in my claim the thing they told me NOT to include in my claim.
(Bold text, italics, all-caps are all mine.)
At this point, I don’t have a lot of hope that I’ll get my money back, but I’m going to keep trying — in part because I’m stubborn, but also because this is getting fun.
And maybe because I’m as stupid as Katie Britt thinks we are.