More Indiana nursing home corruption and connections to then Gov. Mike Pence.

https://www.indystar.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2020/08/04/american-senior-communities-fraud-james-burkhart-secret-report/1796760001/?for-guid=b0ee9434-d0f3-11ea-85f4-3ed2ef1eaa86&utm_source=indystar-Daily%20Briefing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_briefing_greeting&utm_term=newsletter_greeting https://twitter.com/JP7916/status/1281264537816227840

Today, more than 90% of Indiana’s 535 nursing homes are owned, at least on paper, by county hospitals, which rake off hundreds of millions of Medicaid dollars each year to support hospital operations.

While legal, the practice leaves Indiana with some of the most understaffed nursing homes in the United States.

Money lost to fraud was just one more way in which those Medicaid dollars were not getting to the nursing home patients they were intended to help.

Helen Mars’ father was one of at least 1,618 Indiana nursing home residents to die from COVID-19, many in understaffed nursing homes. And state officials have been SILENT on nursing home reform.

The constant questions surrounding the program always made it a dicey source of revenue. Together, Matt Gutwein and James Burkhart (article explains their story more) legally channeled thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to politicians with influence over the program.

Burkhart specifically referenced then-Gov. Mike Pence, who he said didn’t like the program because he was “a Republican” and a “serious Tea Partier.”

Burkhart and three other people ASC’s confidential report identified as alleged fraud participants each contributed $20,000 to Pence on a single day in 2014, according to campaign finance records.

These highlighted excerpts of the article above are some of the many interesting points in the article. It is a must read and excellent work by @indystar reporters.

One more important point here regarding Covid19.

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic spread, state officials supportive of the plan to divert federal nursing home dollars joined in the secrecy, refusing for months to identify nursing homes with outbreaks.

Only on July 22 did state officials begin releasing the data. Other states have launched attorney general investigations into the high death toll at nursing homes, sometimes at the request of the governor, but not in Indiana.

Why is this @GovHolcomb???