Pay for Play Donations from MCOs, Rising Costs of Medicaid, Illegally Appointing a Judge, a Sexual Harassment Scandal, and a Meeting with an Ethics Board, Just a Few of Governor Reynolds’ Headlines From This Week

What a week for Governor Kim Reynolds! On Monday, Reynolds was taken to task for giving a Managed Care Organization a $100 million raise just two days after receiving campaign donations from their parent organization, and her week only went downhill from there, ending in a hearing in front of an ethics board and a major sexual harassment scandal involving one of her closest political allies.
  • This week started with Reynolds being exposed for accepting over $1,000 in campaign contributions from Anthem Insurance, which owns Amerigroup, one of the two private companies currently managing Iowa’s Medicaid program just two days before Reynolds announced a 7.5% raise for Amerigroup and United Health Care.
  • This news comes as Reynolds’ privatized Medicaid disaster continues to fail on every single count. The Des Moines Register reported that the cost per patient on Medicaid has nearly tripled. The per-member cost of the private Medicaid program has gone up 4.4% per year and is expected to increase 11 percent next year. In the previous six years, when Medicaid was public, the average cost per patient increase was 1.5% per year.
  • Amid the Governor’s most recent ethics scandal, Reynolds also admitted that she broke the law in appointing a judge to a district court after the deadline to do so had already passed. Reynolds’ only defense was, “I don’t know” and to say that she was “on the road” and “busy.”
  • Thursday, a report detailed shocking acts of sexual harassment of Reynolds’ longtime friend and close ally Dave Jamison and included statements from his employees implying they were afraid to report his reprehensible behavior because of his close relationship with the Governor. Even more concerning, employees reported that Jamison’s behavior got worse after Reynolds was sworn in as governor.
  • Reynolds’ many challenges with laws and ethics came to a head Thursday when she was called in for a hearing in front of the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board. The hearing came in response to a complaint that Reynolds accepted a private flight supposedly provided by Sedgwick’s CEO Dave North, who is one of Reynolds’ top donors. Sedgwick’s also administers workers’ compensation claims filed by injured Iowa executive branch employees, and benefited from a law change backed by Reynolds in 2017, reducing benefits for injured workers.
With only six weeks left in the campaign, things seem to only be getting worse for this “ethically challenged” Governor.
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