Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said during a hearing on drug pricing that she once declined to pay for birth control medicine when she saw how high the price was at the pharmacy.
Boebert recalled thinking at the time that “it’s cheaper to have a kid.”
In a House Oversight and Accountability hearing on the role of pharmacy benefit managers in prescription drug prices, lawmakers questioned the lack of transparency and the high prices of prescription drugs.
Boebert asked a witness — pharmacist owner Kevin J. Duane — whether he frequently sees people leaving prescriptions at the counter because they can’t afford them.
“I left a prescription at a pharmacy once. I went to get birth control,” she said. “And I was there at the counter and went to pay for it, and the price was very, very high. I said, ‘Wow, is this a three-, six-month prescription?’ ‘No ma’am this is one month’ And I said, ‘It’s cheaper to have a kid,’ and I left it there.”
“And now I have my third son, Kaydon Boebert,” she added. “It turned out to be a really great thing. But I personally experienced that when times were tough.”
Boebert — whose first bill this year was to defund Planned Parenthood, which provides affordable health care and contraception to women — quickly drew scrutiny for these comments.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) took to Twitter to respond to Boebert’s sentiment in the hearing, writing, “And then she voted against the right to contraception so she could double this problem and give it to the next person.”
