FORT PIERCE, Fla. – On Wednesday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed back against a new report that said last year’s $10 million donation to Hope Florida, a charity spearheaded by his wife, Casey DeSantis, was part of a Medicaid settlement that owed millions of dollars to state and federal taxpayers.
In a news conference in Fort Pierce, DeSantis called the report by the Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald “fabricated,” and reiterated that the $10 million donation from Centene, the state’s largest Medicaid managed care operator, was a separate contribution and not part of the multi-million-dollar settlement.
“This is an attempt to try to manufacture a narrative where there’s really nothing there. Why are they doing it? It’s all because they want to try to impugn our Hope Florida program. That’s why they’re doing it. It’s all political,” DeSantis said.
Press play above to watch DeSantis’ remarks on the Times/Herald report
According to the Times/Herald report published on Tuesday, a copy of a draft agreement showed that three years ago, lawyers working with the state reached a $67,048,611 settlement with Centene after finding the Medicaid contractor had overbilled taxpayers that exact amount for medications. However, instead of returning the full amount to taxpayers, they sent $10 million to the Hope Florida Foundation, according to the report.
After receiving the money from Centene, the foundation made $5 million grants each to Secure Florida’s Future, a nonprofit organization linked to the Florida Chamber of Commerce, and Save Our Society from Drugs.
The groups received the grants while they were making contributions to Keep Florida Clean, a political committee headed by James Uthmeier, who was then Gov. Ron DeSantis’ chief of staff and is now the state attorney general. Keep Florida Clean fought a proposed constitutional amendment in November that would have allowed recreational use of marijuana.
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In a news conference on Tuesday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said he “wasn’t part of securing the deal that was struck.”
“My understanding is that there was a sweetener in there, that Centene’s estimated harms to the state was $56, $57 million,” he said. “If it’s a contribution to a 501(c)(3) entity, that is not state dollars, that is not Medicaid dollars,” Uthmeier added.
According to the report, records show the then-secretary for the Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees Medicaid, attended none of the five Centene-related meetings in 2022. The agency’s assistant deputy secretary for Medicaid attended one meeting.
Rep. Alex Andrade, who has been investigating the $10 million donation to Hope Florida, told the Herald/Times on Monday that DeSantis “is either misinformed by his shrinking circle, or he’s lying.”
Last week, Joshua Hay, the chairman of Hope Florida Inc. said under oath that “mistakes were made” with the foundation’s record-keeping, as a skirmish over the group’s finances continued to escalate.
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But DeSantis has stayed firm in his stance that the controversy surrounding Hope Florida is just part of a “smear campaign and an attempt to sabotage” the program’s success.
“When you do settlements, you can try to get as much money as you can, but this was in addition to what they were getting. This is kind of like a cherry on top where they agreed to make an additional contribution, and so we were served well by what ACHA did,” DeSantis said in a news conference in early April.
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DeSantis also said on Wednesday that the Times/Herald was sent a document that breaks down the settlement agreement and that proves the $10 million was a private donation on top of a $56 million settlement related to the overbilled medications.
“It’s there. It’s documented,” DeSantis said.
However, as of Wednesday afternoon, the report by the Times/Herald had not been updated to reflect that they had received such a document.
Launched by Casey DeSantis in 2021, Hope Florida operates across multiple state agencies and is designed to “foster community collaboration between the public and private sector, faith-based communities, and nonprofits, to break down traditional community silos,” according to its website.