Two Florida U.S. Democratic Reps. call for federal investigation into Hope Florida

Two Florida congressional Democrats have asked federal officials to investigate allegations that the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) and Hope Florida Foundation inappropriately diverted Medicaid funds to two unrelated political committees last year.

The Hope Florida Foundation is a nonprofit affiliated with Hope Florida. Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis started the charity to connect struggling Floridians with local charities and churches.

U.S. Reps. Kathy Castor’s and Darren Soto’s letter to Juliet T. Hodgkins, acting inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services, marked the first time that federally elected officials have called for a federal investigation into the Hope Florida matter.

“The transfer of Medicaid dollars to a charitable committee and then political committees appears to run afoul of federal laws, including 18 U.S.C. 1347 (to knowingly execute or attempt a scheme to defraud a health care benefit program or obtain money from it) and 18 U.S.C. 371 (for two or more people to agree to defraud the United States), and may implicate other relevant statutes and regulations,” Castor and Soto write.

“As members of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee that provides oversight of Medicaid, we can assure you that Congress is very focused on waste, fraud and abuse of Medicaid dollars. Any unlawful diversion of Medicaid dollars in Florida means that the state is less able to provide services to our neighbors who rely on Medicaid and support the providers who serve them.”

The controversy dominated the second half of the Florida Legislative session this year. It centers around a $10 million “donation” to the Hope Florida Foundation that came from a Medicaid overpayment settlement with the health care giant Centene last September.

A month later, the foundation sent that $10 million to two nonprofit political committees. Those two committees subsequently sent $8.5 million to Keep Florida Clean, a political action committee created to oppose Amendment 3, the ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana.

The revelations regarding the Hope Florida Foundation were first reported by the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald. They led to an investigation by the Florida House Health Care Budget Subcommittee that abruptly ended inconclusively three weeks ago. The Chair of that Committee, Pensacola Republican Alex Andrade, said that any final charging decisions would be up to the U.S. Department of Justice.

‘Really disheartening’

But there has yet to be a federal response to the controversy.

“Hope Florida had raised only $2 million during its three years of existence but in one fell swoop, received $10 million from a Medicaid settlement which was immediately funneled through other nonprofits to a PAC directed by the Governor’s Chief of Staff,” the lawmakers wrote in a reference to James Uthmeier, subsequently appointed by DeSantis to serve as the state’s attorney general.

The letter adds:

“The Florida House of Representatives initiated an investigation into what State Rep. Alex Andrade called a potential ‘conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud,’ but ultimately determined that ‘the best avenue is probably a federal investigation because … these were Medicaid dollars.’ The diversion of Medicaid dollars requires immediate investigation.”

During a new conference in Brandon on Wednesday, Casey DeSantis asserted that Hope Florida has become one of the “only meaningful reforms” to the welfare state since President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs from the late 1960s.

She said it was “really disheartening and very sad, but not surprising, to see these slanderous false accusations hurled at Hope Florida in an attempt to undermine all of the meaningful progress that we’ve had on so many families across the state of Florida.”

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Mitch Perry reporting via Florida Phoenix, part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: [email protected].