News spread through the grapevine over the past few days that an urgent meeting had been called by Speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives Nathaniel Ledbetter to bring the two sides opposing each other over HB 238 aka the FAIR Meds Act to sit down for a closed door parley at the State House. Expecting not so much a smoke filled back room full of genteel horse trading as opposed to a dressing down by the usual suspects from downtown Birmingham and their craven allies in Montgomery, advocates of fair treatment for independent pharmacies in Alabama were hoping for the best while preparing for the worst. By the time you are reading this, chances are the meeting will have already transpired. Nevertheless, insights into this secretive conference were provided to the Examiner by a source inside the coalition supporting the pharmacies.
Describing the context which led to the sit down, the source remarked;
"The Speaker of the House, Ledbetter, has asked us and the opposition to come together for a meeting in the morning. We have got that at 9am, because he knows that we were able to push it through the committee. We have got some traction, but there has also been a heavy swell of opposition in the media and otherwise. He wants us to see if there is any common ground which can be found."
"Blue Cross doesn't want to give up any of their non-profits. They told BCA and all the employers that they are going to raise rates if this passes. That is just the narrative of how things are done in Montgomery. Whether it is right or wrong, whether it is good or bad, that doesn't seem to carry a lot of weight. The system in place makes it very difficult for a good bill that takes care of local people to pass when big money doesn't want it to move."
"We're going to go to the fight, we're going to speak our peace. We are going to see what we can do to move forward. Leadership is not against us, they are just getting a lot of pressure from a lot of directions."
Leading the opposition to HB 238 is the dubiously dubbed umbrella organization known as the Alliance of Alabama Healthcare Consumers or AAHC for short, whose ranks include many of the notorious downtowner syndicates who somehow find a way to be on the wrong side of every issue that comes through Montgomery. Commenting on the likes of Alabama Power, Regions Bank, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama and the Business Council of Alabama rearing their ugly head yet again, the source commented;
"Same guys, same exact people. It's all the same, it's Blue Cross running BCA, those two together create the alliance. That way they can shift some of the tactics that they use. They can put Robin Stone in charge of it, he can be the face of it or the scapegoat. Whatever he needs to be. They just keep on doing what they do, control how things are done in Alabama."
Malicious skepticism over the future necessity of independent pharmacies has been consistently promoted by the downtowners and their media accomplices, comparing them disparagingly to outdated business models such as Blockbuster Video. Making note of that truly bad take, the source stated;
"That is an analogy that they used a few years back, they said 'now you don't need video because you can stream everything'. I assume they think you can order all the meds that you need and all your healthcare can be taken care of by your mailman."
"A lot of rural areas, they don't have good internet. Elderly people don't always navigate the internet well. When you have got everything sourced out overseas and everywhere else, you are not going to get someone that can explain anything to you or help you understand. When those things are not taken care of and those patients are not taken care of, costs are going to escalate through the roof because none of the preemptive care is happening. Vaccines aren't happening, flu shots aren't happening. When you notice that patient who comes in, you say 'Hey, your color is off, are you ok? What is going on, did you change meds?' That is where you get to, and that is not going to happen."
Referencing the total annihilation of the textile industry in Alabama and the abject failure of state government and the so called business leaders in downtown Birmingham to mitigate it, the source made the spot on comparison regarding the prospect of independent pharmacies going the way of the wooly mammoth and 8-track cassettes;
"Once it is all gone, you can't get it back with the snap of a finger. Once they are in control, you have no control over cost. Those mills aren't going to snap back, pharmacies aren't going to. These hospitals that have closed, the building could snap back but you haven't got anybody to work in them. The doctors have left, the pharmacists have left."
Recognizing the trump card that the downtowners have cynically played time and again in forcing their corporatist agenda upon the entire state, the source identified the perils of getting HB 238 through the house only to stall out in a thoroughly compromised Alabama Senate;
"I know that the opposition generally has a little more power in the senate than they do in the house. Just because there are so few senators and it is so much easier to kill something in the senate because it only takes one or two people to get in the way and it really slows it down. I think our biggest enemy, other than a little bit of the negative narrative that is out there, is time. We are slowly running out of time until the session is over. Even if we had much more momentum and everything in the house, we also thought many of the issues with the bill would have been worked out as well. Because they have been unwilling to negotiate, we have just been sitting on what we have got."
"Any bill that has this type of opposition, it gets to the floor, it usually passes. That is how they work, they keep it from getting to the floor with a few strategic moves. Or they run you out of time or they stall you, that is just the nature of the beast. One of them has a connection here, one of them has a connection there. They are good at what they do and they have got plenty of money to do it with."
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