This is the second in a series of articles on the trial of Alabama Speaker Mike Hubbard. Read the other installments here: part one; part three; part four; part five.

To get a sense of how Mike Hubbard has affected the lives of everyday Alabamians, type #IamMedicaid into Facebook or Twitter. Up pops a seemingly endless series of photos of children: a pigtailed toddler with a cleft lip and palette; a boy with two missing front teeth who fell into a fire and spent three weeks in a burn unit; a girl with a congenital heart defect; a boy in a wheelchair with a half-shaven head who suffers from Hirschsprung’s Syndrome, and is recovering from brain surgery to cure an infection in his central nervous system.

They’re all smiling and holding placards that bear the “I am Medicaid” slogan, a social campaign that is tied to one of the 23 felony counts the speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives faces in a trial that begins this week—the one charge that might well be the most difficult for Hubbard to beat. In 2013, Hubbard voted 12 times for a bill that would give a monopoly over Alabama’s Medicaid prescription drug program, worth some $40 million a year, to American Pharmacy Cooperative, Inc. (APCI), with which he had a $5,000-a-month contract. Hubbard has claimed that his work for APCI concerned only out-of-state business, and that he wasn’t aware that the bill would benefit the company. But one of his former colleagues, Greg Wren, who pleaded guilty during the grand jury phase of the case, is expected to testify that Hubbard directed him to insert 23 words into the bill that would give APCI its monopoly.

But Hubbard’s alleged crime is just the most flagrant example of how Alabama lawmakers abuse Medicaid. The Alabama legislature, in which the House speaker enjoys almost supreme power, has repeatedly underfunded the state’s Medicaid program, to the point that it now runs the risk of losing its federal matching funds, which would leave millions of Alabama residents without even minimal health care and imperil the state’s entire medical system. The #IamMedicaid campaign is a response to that perilous shortfall. But Hubbard’s track record suggests that as long as he’s the most powerful man in Alabama, his constituents will only be heard if they speak with dollar signs.



In 2010, Hubbard orchestrated the GOP’s takeover of the legislature, which had been under Democratic control for 136 years, since Reconstruction. Fighting corruption was a central plank of the Republican campaign, along with a promise to root out wasteful spending in Montgomery. “There was an air of optimism when they took control,” says Bob Davis, editor of the Anniston Star. It was an optimism that seemed justified when Hubbard led a special session a month after Election Day, ramming through a slate of tough ethics laws.