Chapman withdraws vaccine exemption amendments, says ‘big medicine’ killed the bills
By Stephen Baldwin, RealWV
With only two days remaining in this year’s legislative session, it appears that the bills providing additional childhood vaccine exemptions have been put to rest. At least for now.
Governor Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order in January, instituting vaccination exemptions on religious grounds. The Senate sought to codify that order in SB 460, which they passed early on in the session.
After being scaled back in the House committee process, a bipartisan coalition in the House eventually voted the bill down by a vote of 42-56 last month. It appeared the issue had been put to rest.
However, on Monday and then again on Tuesday, the Senate Health & Human Resources Committee amended vaccination exemption requirements into seemingly unrelated bills.
Committee Vice Chair Vince Deeds, R-Greenbrier, moved to strike and insert the new, amended language into existing House bills on both days. He later told WV Metronews he did not support the policy but felt a duty to go along with his chair.
The bills were scheduled for votes on Wednesday, but were delayed several times. When it came time to vote on HB 2776 and HB 2402 on Thursday, Sen. Laura Chapman, R-Ohio, said, “I request unanimous consent to withdraw the Health & Human Resources committee amendment.”
Sen. Joey Garcia, D-Marion, stood and asked Chapman, “I just want to make sure there’s nothing related to the immunization bill we had earlier this year?”
“That’s correct,” Chapman replied.
This left both House bills as they originally were–one pertaining to reporting alpha-gal cases and one pertaining to child medical records.
Later in the night, Chapman made impassioned remarks on the floor about what happened.
“Make no mistake, big pharma and big medicine aren’t influencing our policies,” Chapman said. “They are buying them through radio ads, newspaper ads, and TV ads. They’re buying them by spending millions to get their candidates elected.”
Last year, RealWV reported on Pfizer’s campaign contributions to Republican state legislators. Click here for the story.
“I have heard flippant and untrue comments that we have done nothing this session,” Chapman continued, apparently in reference to a floor speech earlier this week from Sen. Deeds, the vice chair of the committee Chapman chairs.
“I take great offense to that. Just because the media hasn’t reported on those bills doesn’t mean we haven’t done anything. We passed some amazing bills, including common sense reforms to our failing health care system. Those measures failed over and over, not because those reforms are a bad idea but because those reforms eat into big medicine’s profit structure…health care profits have almost tripled, but those have not helped West Virginians.”
As to why the vaccine exemption failed? Chapman said, “Big medicine didn’t want the bill and successfully killed it. It’s as simple as that.”
Both bills were expected to face tough roads if they were to pass with the proposed vaccine amendments in the House.
As reported by West Virginia Watch, the state is continuing to provide requested religious exemptions to children whose parents request it under the authority of the governor’s executive order. Since January, nearly 200 children have been granted such an exemption.
Stay tuned to RealWV for further updates as the session draws to a close.
