Major Donor Under Investigation

The U.S. Department of Justice is raiding WellCare's financial records down in Tampa today. See the release here. The Attorney General's Medicaid fraud unit is involved.

WellCare and its affiliates have given the Republican Party of Florida some $105,000 in contributions this year, according to state election records. They've also given the Florida Democratic Party $5,000 this year.

Comments

Convenient for the federal government when they get ripped off by an insurance company the feds raid the company with FBI agents.

Too bad Florida property insurance policyholders can't do the same thing when they get ripped off and send in the FBI agents.

I hope they are looking at that crook Johnnie Byrd and what he did for Wellcare as speaker.

Medicaid patients abruptly shift to HMOs for mental health care
By ALISA ULFERTS
St. Petersburg Times
Jun 7, 2004

They were just two sentences in a 92-page bill, but they added up to $140-million to HMOs angling for state contracts.

The clause, one of the most controversial measures state lawmakers passed this year, shifted hundreds of thousands of Medicaid psychiatric and substance abuse patients into health maintenance organizations.

What made it controversial wasn't just how it was passed - it was buried in a budget bill without public debate in any committee - but that it unraveled a bill lawmakers passed unanimously last year after months of debate.

That bill set up an advisory board, Florida Substance Abuse and Mental Health Corp., to oversee the gradual shift of Medicaid psychiatric and substance abuse patients into managed care.

Under that plan, HMOs could apply to offer the prepaid plans, as could nonprofit community health centers.

But the clause lawmakers approved this year, many without initially realizing it, gave HMOs the right to the business immediately. The change was pushed by WellCare, a Tampa HMO that has supported House Speaker Johnnie Byrd's Republican U.S. Senate bid.

"It will be the biggest mass conversion of Medicaid beneficiaries to managed care in the history of Medicaid," said Bob Sharpe, who was the state Medicaid director until last month and now president of the Florida Council on Behavioral Healthcare, an association of community mental health providers.

Byrd's flight of fancy

St. Petersburg Times
Date: Apr 23, 2004

Not content to have canceled a House session so he could travel to New York to line his pockets with campaign contributions, Speaker Johnnie Byrd must have decided he could call more attention to his political decadence through his flight home. So, as Byrd returned to Tallahassee late Monday from a weekend of schmoozing, he flew aboard a private jet chartered by a Tampa HMO that is asking Florida lawmakers to hand it a $140-million contract for mental health services.

The flight set up by WellCare chief executive officer Todd Farha capped a weekend that included at least one fundraiser organized by Farha. It represented just one more favor from the company, whose executives gave Byrd's U.S. Senate campaign $15,000 in the last quarter of 2003 alone. The Legislature is actively considering whether to turn mental health services over to HMOs, and Byrd's influence is substantial as the session winds to a close.

Upon his return to the Capitol, where House and Senate members had worked through the weekend negotiating the details of the state budget, Byrd offered no real defense of his trip or his travel partner. "Why don't you call the campaign," he told a reporter. "I'm here to do the people's work in Tallahassee." He didn't say whose work he was doing in New York while he forced the people's work to be put on hold.

With Byrd, the "people's work" often seems to involve business lobbyists who are willing to write him checks. When lobbyists see his phone number flash on their caller ID, they know what's coming "He asked me to put some checks together, and he offered to meet with my clients," one lobbyist said last fall. "In the course of talking about (a legislative issue), he said, 'I've got a fundraiser coming up, and I was hoping you could help me out,' " said another lobbyist.

Byrd owes his speakership, in part, to his ability to shake down lobbyists. He formed a committee that raised more than $400,000 over the past four years, and he funneled some of that money into the campaigns of House members who would support him as speaker. He also put some of that money, $20,346 worth, in his own pocket to "reimburse" himself for expenses he declines to talk about.

Give Byrd this much: He may not be the most shameless politician in Florida, but it's not for lack of effort.

[green hornet]

Don't forget to look at Commissioner Brian"Bumblebee" Blairs contributor lists just posted last week.. Must be at least 8 ckecks from every Wellcare affliate company. He was doing their bidding when he tried to gut the award winning Hillsborough County indigent healthcare plan and turn it over to.........WELLCARE.

Liberals at the SPTimes and their Democrat friends love to spread inunendo and misinformation about good Republican leaders raising campaign funds legally and effectively. Nowhere will you read this kind of garbage about Hillary Clinton-D China, and her ILLEGAL contributions! Nowhere will you read this kind of garbage about any democrat!

2:20...What's the difference between a good Republican leader and a bad Republican leader?

Who controls Wellcare? Who hired Wellcare CEO, Farha? George Soros. That's right, the money man behind Moveon.org.

2:40
According to the Times, there are no good Republican leaders and no bad Democrat leaders-including Hillary Clinton-D China.

2:48... Sounds like you don't know the difference between good and bad.

Soros Really? are you sure?

Another recent example of an obscene amount of money going from WellCare to a politician is at least 16 checks for $500 each to Eric Zichella running in the current special election to the House. What do they think they can get for that kind of money?

3:32 - is this going in the next mail piece...or phone script?

Sounds like the candidates NOT getting contributions from WellCare are jealous!

yes, I am sure they are jealous that they are not going to be tainted by a company that was raided by 200 FBI agents today

What is Bob Graham's culpability in this fiasco? Shouldn't he have known what was going on? How much money did he rake in from WellCare?

[RINO]

I see McCollum is joining forces with other very liberal AGs with regard to sticking it to Microsoft---despite the Europeans trying to do in this american company. McCollum is no conservative.

[skimble]

George Soros sold his interest in WellCare a year ago.

Todd Farha is a Bush Pioneer -- bundling over $100,000 in contributions to George W. Bush. (So is David Hart, WellCare finance director.)

Todd Farha is overseen by an audit committee on which his cousin serves.

The WellCare Medicaid fraud consists of a bunch of GOP-loving conservatives sticking their greasy hands in the US Treasury.

Graham and Soros are irrelevant. There is some major league stupidity among these commenters.

Has anyone checked the FEC records of current presidential candidates to see who has received money from Wellcare?

[Bill McCollum]

Teams up with the most liberal AGs, including Cali and NY, to stick it to Microsoft with antitrust supervision---let's put microsoft out of business because the democratic bureaucrats and Bill McCollum (he needs to change parties) say so.