How corrupt must a healthcare-related scheme be that even Rick fucking Scott, the Republican senator who once ran a company responsible for the largest healthcare fraud involving Medicaid and Medicare in history, thinks you done screwed the proverbial pooch? Pretty gosh-darned corrupt, we would imagine!
But leave it to Smilin’ Ron DeSantis, the sour-pussed governor of the alligator-infested hurricane bait we call Florida, to make it happen!
CBS News Miami got hold of a sealed grand jury report showing that higher-ups in the DeSantis administration diverted $10 million from a Medicaid fraud settlement to the Hope Florida Foundation, which is a charity set up by DeSantis’s wife, Casey, the bargain-basement Jackie Kennedy of American politics.
Hope Florida is, in theory, dedicated to helping people off of government assistance and encouraging them to use religious-based charities. (Which is probably a whole other story itself.) But in this case, the money was funneled from Hope Florida to two political action committees and the Republican Party of Florida, which used it to defeat a ballot measure in 2024 that would have legalized weed in the state.
The $10 million was part of a $67 million settlement with Centene, a healthcare company that had been overbilling Florida’s Healthy Kids program for prescription drugs provided to poor children. Centene’s lawyers weren’t happy about directing the money to this unaffiliated charity. So a couple of Florida officials got them to direct it to a state agency, the Agency for Health Care Administration. The AHCA then directed it to Hope Florida:
“His political concerns were resolved by the change to the agreement making the settlement AHCA’s agreement rather than the AG’s settlement agreement,” the grand jury report states, “as the problem would now be AHCA’s problem rather than the AG’s problem.”
In other words, Florida government officials deliberately used some very clever lawyering to steal money that had been intended for the healthcare of poor children and used it to beat a ballot measure to legalize pot, which Florida Republicans opposed.
Someone really needs to explain to these people that Mr. Burns is not in fact the hero of The Simpsons. We bet these people are still mad that Maggie Simpson — spoiler alert! — was not prosecuted for shooting him.
The report makes clear that the grand jurors think someone committed a crime here. They just couldn’t prove it:
“Despite our finding that the money was misappropriated, we find insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally,” the report concluded. “Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida… or had any memory of who made it.”
Ah, the old “we’re all just smol beans, we can’t be expected to remember all our thieving” defense so beloved by public officials caught with their dicks in the cookie jar.
The best part of all this is how many high-level Florida government officials signed off on this plan to literally take medicine from poor kids because they didn’t want weed stores popping up on Miami Beach. The high government official the grand jury found to be most responsible — the “nexus” — for this misappropriation is James Uthmeier, who was DeSantis’s chief of staff at the time. He is now Florida’s attorney general. The majority of the $10 million wound up with his PAC after leaving Hope Florida.
Another high official the grand jury named was Ashley Moody, who was Florida’s attorney general at the time, until DeSantis appointed her to take over Marco Rubio’s Senate seat. She had “authorized” her deputy, John Guard, to sign the settlement agreement that in effect directed the $10 million to Hope Florida.
Guard was later nominated for a federal judgeship. His nomination was blocked by Rick Scott, who said that “millions in tax dollars for poor kids have no business funding political ads.”
Again, Rick fucking Scott.
The people involved in this scheme deny wrongdoing. DeSantis, who always looks like someone just force-fed him his own placenta, said he was “very happy” with how things were done, and also that the whole dust-up is a “hoax” somehow.
Funny, then, that state officials including Uthmeier have reportedly been downplaying the grand jury report — Uthmeier called it a “nothingburger” — while also allegedly blocking its release for seven months through undisclosed legal channels. It does explain, though, why both Guard and a spokesman for Uthmeier responded to questions from CBS Miami by screeching that leaking a sealed grand jury report is a crime.
Imagine using that talking point to try and grab the moral high ground here. Yes, little Katie won’t get her cancer drugs paid for, but what’s important here is that someone is besmirching me by illegally releasing a grand jury report calling out my probably illegal and definitely immoral behavior.
It is no wonder Carl Hiaasen never seems to run out of material.
The good news is, DeSantis is termed out of office in January and will be free to move on to his next grift. The bad news is that it will probably be another run at the Republican presidential nomination in 2028. And why not? Donald Trump has more than proven you can take unabashed thievery to new heights from the Oval Office. Someone has to carry on that tradition, and DeSantis has obviously been practicing.
OPEN THREAD.
Wonkette is supported by our generous readers and not by stealing Medicaid money for poor children. So, morally speaking, we think we’ve got the high ground here.
Time for another cat pic as album cover!
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-323725176?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc
Well what's Senator Skeletor gonna DO about it? Keep supporting Republicans to continue taking food out of childrens' mouths, because they and the rest of the unreconstructed death cultists that support them want to smash minorities?