Opinion | Billion dollar prison healthcare contract should be above r…

It’s a billion dollars. 

For about an hour last week, I found myself just repeating that sentence over and over as the video of the most recent Legislative Contract Review Committee meeting played on my laptop, and an attorney for the Alabama Department of Corrections inexplicably attempted to downplay lawmakers’ concern about the new handling of the new prison healthcare contract. 

That contract was for $1.06 billion over four years. 

And it had been handled like a contract for 1.06 dollars. 

That is to say, it was handled with all the care and attention that one might expect from a government agency seeking about a dollar’s worth of services. 

Everything about it was screwed up. 

First off, the attorney tasked with explaining how YesCare, a relatively new company, won the bid despite not being anywhere close to the lowest bidder, actually used the phrase “inside information” while explaining how YesCare was apparently improperly provided info that other bidding…