Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost
Medicaid director owned stock in companies she awarded huge contracts
Ohio Medicaid Director Maureen Corcoran won’t discuss them, but state ethics filings she submitted on Sunday showed that she continued to own stock in three huge health care companies last year — the same year she negotiated and signed billion-dollar contracts with their subsidiaries. Outside ethics experts have said it’s a clear conflict of interest […]
After years, pharmacy-middleman suit might finally come to trial
Since at least 2016, Ohio pharmacists have been accusing large companies acting as pharmacy middlemen of abusive practices, which they deny. And since 2019, the state has been accusing them as well, in the form of lawsuits. Now, after years of wrangling in court, some of that litigation might be headed to trial. The middlemen, […]
Louisiana sues health care company over practices under investigation in Ohio
Louisiana is suing health care giant UnitedHealth over several business practices, saying it is seeking “to recover billions of dollars in inflated prescription-drug prices” for the state Medicaid program. Among its allegations, the state accuses the company of gaming federal oversight reports meant to ensure that at least 85% of the money it gets from […]
Consulting firm that worked for the feds had conflicts. What about another that worked for Ohio?
Can Ohioans be confident that a consulting firm paid almost $10 million by taxpayers last year to assist in a $22 billion procurement didn’t have conflicts of interest? The firm hasn’t answered whether any of the Medicaid managed-care bidders were also its clients. And Ohio officials don’t appear to have much interest in digging out […]
Ohio AG, governor announce $10M for solving gun crime
In the face of spiking gun crime, the state’s top two officials on Thursday announced a $10.5 million investment in technology and personnel to trace fugitive guns across jurisdictions. As he announced the program, Gov. Mike DeWine denied that when he signed a bill earlier this month eliminating gun-permitting requirements, he might have helped to […]
Ohio Medicaid won’t say if it considered federal oversight reports in massive procurement
The Ohio Department of Medicaid not only is refusing to release key oversight reports from its contractors, it’s refusing to say whether it even considered them last year as it undertook the largest public procurement in Ohio history. As a consequence of that procurement, the company with the highest score on the federally required oversight […]
Ohio Medicaid preaches transparency, withholds watchdog reports
Ohio Medicaid director Maureen Corcoran often stresses the importance of transparency in delivering $35 billion worth of health care each year to Ohio’s poor and disabled. But in response to an open-records request, the department last week refused to provide copies of key, federally required reports meant to ensure that its biggest contractors aren’t gouging […]
Attorney General seeks financial info from Medicaid contractors
In the past month, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has sought financial information from the state’s five managed-care contractors, documents received in response to an open-records request show. The AG won’t discuss ongoing investigations, but he might be looking into whether some practices by subcontractors who manage pharmacy benefits violate state law or federal regulations. […]
State employee pension fund to audit big PBM
The upcoming audit will be the fifth time in 10 years that the pharmacy benefit manager to the Ohio Employees Retirement System has been audited. An earlier version of this story said it had been audited more frequently. It’s been updated. The Ohio Employees Retirement System is seeking proposals for a firm to audit Express […]
Survey: Ohio economists disagree on whether YouTube, Facebook operate as monopolies
Some social-media powerhouses have already come under fire in Ohio. Now a majority of a panel of Ohio economists says three of the biggest — Facebook, YouTube and Twitter — behave as such. But a significant slice of the panel disagreed. The Buckeye State has long played an important role in the history of antitrust […]
Another question about DeWine conflicts in Ohio redistricting
Ohio Supreme Court Justice Pat DeWine has said he doesn’t have a conflict sitting in judgment of a case involving a redistricting commission on which his father sits. That’s because the father, according to his son, is acting in only an official capacity. It’s a claim that some ethics experts have bluntly rejected. The claim […]
Stimulus checks tied to overdose spike, but that doesn’t make them a mistake, Yost says
It was an epidemic within a pandemic. April 2020 was a time when the Covid-19 pandemic tightened a grip that still hasn’t really eased. It also marked the beginning of a year that would see 100,000 opioid deaths in the United States. That was the most since the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention […]