Lawmakers and advocates call for accountability after insurance company hired investigators to look into patients
AUSTIN (Nexstar) – Lawmakers and patient advocates are calling for accountability after a legislative hearing revealed emails indicating an insurance company's use of private investigators to gather information on customers and state lawmakers. Superior HealthPlan receives funding from the state to manage the care of sick and disabled children through programs like STAR Kids.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into Superior HealthPlan, one day after a heated public hearing at the Capitol. In the March 26 hearing, lawmakers on the House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, grilled the company's CEO over surveillance practices, they say, that crossed a line.
During the hearing, committee chairman Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, revealed emails indicating Superior hired private investigators to get information on lawmakers and customers.
'Why would you go and and run a background check, hire a private investigator to follow, to dig into the records of people who are your customers?' Capriglione asked CEO Mark Sanders.
'First of all, I will say we no longer use that practice, and haven't for several years,' Sanders answered. 'At the time, we really just wanted to have information on those individuals, and really nothing beyond that of what was publicly available to us.'
One day after the hearing, Centene, the parent company to Superior HealthPlan, announced that Sanders was no longer with the company.
Rep. Capriglione spoke with the State of Texas host the week after the hearing. Capriglione was joined by Hannah Mehta, founder of the advocacy group Protect TX Fragile Kids.
Rep. Giovanni Capriglione: 'Let's start with the fact that Superior was funded almost entirely with taxpayer dollars, right? They used those taxpayer dollars to hire private investigators to surreptitiously follow journalists, customers, and lawmakers. I was made aware of these emails, which led to the discovery of additional information about who they were following and the intent behind them. And so in our committee hearing just a week ago, we revealed that to the public and made them answer.'
Josh Hinkle: 'Hannah, what are some of the concerns you've heard from the families with medically fragile children who rely on the state's STAR Kids program?'Hannah Mehta: 'You know this is horrifying and alarming for families who literally are fighting for life, sustaining care for their children, trying to keep their kids alive. In this case, Linda Badawo was one of those who was fighting for her foster child who was actually awarded the state to be able to breathe and maintain his trach care that was ordered by his doctor, and so we have seen this pattern of behavior from Superior and it is alarming and horrifying that patients who are literally just trying to stay alive and follow their doctor's orders are being targeted for trying to access that care.'Josh Hinkle: 'So in last week's hearing, Sanders admitted he authorized hiring private investigators to get information on patients. Hannah, you knew about these emails for a while. What was it like for you to hear the admission in the hearing itself?'Hannah Mehta: 'Sunlight is the best disinfectant. There is, I think again, a pattern of behavior here that is really disturbing. Texans deserve better, and taxpayers deserve better. Patients deserve better. No family, no patient, should be targeted for trying to keep their child alive, for trying to access care for their loved one. And this could be anyone. This could be you. This could be any text, and we should all be horrified and concerned about what we're hearing here.'
Josh Hinkle: 'One question I have is about the transparency surrounding this type of program. You know, it was even difficult for the media to get confirmation of rumors we've been hearing for months, and finally, it came out in this hearing, is there more transparency to be had in the future when it comes to this type of funding and these type of programs?'Rep. Giovanni Capriglione: We have several bills going right now in the legislature, several on contracting, of course, a few on transparency. HB 111 and a few other bills that we're working on that will require Absolutely, much more transparency, making sure that whether it's the press or patients or lawmakers get more access to what is going on with our dollars. I mean, we created the Speaker of the House, created the delivery of government efficiency [committee], and I think behind efficiency is transparency. The way that we need to make sure that we do this is that everyone has access. These are taxpayer dollars. I mean, and not just a few. This is the second biggest expense for the state. Okay, there's tens of billions of dollars of contracts that are going out to provide medical care to constituents of Texas. We deserve answers. We deserve responses as soon as possible.'Josh Hinkle: 'So I have a question for both of you. Sanders is obviously out. The company is under investigation from the AG, what do you hope changes after this?'Hannah Mehta: 'You know, I think the truth of the matter is, Josh, there are some massive changes that need to be made in this system, but let's take one step at a time, and let's start by addressing these issues and also ensuring that patients can access, incredibly vulnerable patients can access the life sustaining care that they need on a daily basis. And that starts with, as Gio said, some oversight, responsibility and some transparency for where those tax dollars are going. Are they being utilized in the way that the Legislature has allocated them, and are the patients, these vulnerable patients, who are often in life and death situations, able to access the care that they need to remain stable? That, that is really the intended purpose of these programs.'Josh Hinkle: 'You've touched on the transparency. What other changes are you hoping for?'Rep. Giovanni Capriglione: 'Well, first of all, I'm thankful that Attorney General Ken Paxton is investigating Superior. I'm expecting him, and I'm sure that he will do everything he can to make sure that he digs into what they're doing. Because I'll tell you, a company that has a culture of doing this probably has a culture of doing other things as well, whether it's double billing to the state unethical behavior, I think the state should consider dropping the contracts that it has with Superior and requiring all other providers to follow ethical guidelines. And that's what I'm hopeful will happen, not just here in Texas, because I think other states across the country now are going to start looking and asking these same tough questions to their providers.'
After the hearing on March 26, Centene issued a statement in response:
Centene recognizes that rebuilding trust requires more than words. Following the hearing, Centene immediately launched an internal investigation to examine the conduct in question and to ensure our current practices are fully aligned with our core values and ethical standards. In addition, Mark Sanders is no longer with the company.
Our investigation to date indicates that all research in question was conducted through publicly or commercially available resources and limited to desk-based research.
Background research has many business uses, including meeting preparation as well as helping to identify conflicts of interest and potential fraud, waste, and abuse, which is part of our duty as a government-sponsored healthcare organization. The research in question included irrelevant and unnecessary personal information. That was inappropriate and never should have happened. This occurred prior to 2019 and does not reflect the values or standards of our current leadership. For that, we offer our sincere and unequivocal apology.
We have found no evidence of any legal violations, and no individual was ever followed or photographed. Suggestions that these materials were used for leverage or blackmail are completely false.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Miami Herald
2 days ago
- Miami Herald
Ford's Hot Hatch Is Now Officially History
The end is here for Ford's last hot hatch as the company confirmed to Motor1 that every factory build slot for the Focus ST is spoken for. "All Focus ST factory orders until the end of production have now been reserved," European communications manager Finn Thomasen said. Dealers across the Continent may still have a few unclaimed cars hiding in back lots, but once those are gone-and when Focus production stops in November-the book will officially close on Ford's 45-year hot-hatch chapter. The Focus joins a growing list of Ford passenger cars already in the rear-view mirror. The Fiesta bowed out in 2023, the Mondeo in 2022, and the tiny Ka back in 2020. Without them, Ford's European portfolio is dominated by crossovers such as the Puma and Kuga. The shift has taken a bite out of sales: through April, Ford moved 149,601 vehicles in the EU, U.K., and EFTA markets-down 2.2% year-over-year and less than a third of Volkswagen's haul over the same period. Even Hyundai and Kia have pulled ahead, underscoring how much ground Ford has ceded without its affordable hatchbacks. Yes, the seventh-generation Mustang still flies the performance flag, but it's hardly a volume play. EU taxes punish engines bigger than two liters, dogging the 5.0-liter V-8, while the smaller 2.3-liter EcoBoost was pulled from European order books at the end of 2020. The pony car, therefore, lives on as a niche halo, not a substitute for the daily-drivable, budget-friendly thrills once delivered by ST-badged Fiestas and Focuses. Whether Ford ever revisits the hot-hatch formula likely depends on batteries, not boost pressure. Former Ford of Europe boss-now VW sales chief-Martin Sanders has hinted that the Blue Oval could tap further into Volkswagen's MEB electric platform, the foundation for the forthcoming Explorer and Capri EVs. VW has already promised an electric GTI; a battery-fueled Fiesta ST or Focus ST revival isn't unthinkable if the economics line up. For now, though, enthusiasts must look to the used market or pivot to rival brands still flying the internal-combustion hot-hatch flag. The Fiesta Supersport of 1980 lit the fuse; the Escort RS, Fiesta XR2, and decades of ST variants kept the fire roaring. With the Focus ST's curtain call, the combustion-powered Ford hot hatch becomes history. What replaces it, if anything, will almost certainly hum rather than howl. Until that day arrives, the faithful will remember the glory years and, if they're lucky, snag one of the last STs before they're gone. Copyright 2025 The Arena Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Boston Globe
Harvard withheld their degrees for participating in a pro-Palestinian protest. They don't regret it.
'It felt like a culmination of things that had already been happening,' said Joshi in an interview this week with the Globe. 'It felt inseparable from the way they were treating pro-Palestinian protests in general.' A year since Harvard refused to award degrees to the 13 graduating seniors who participated in a pro-Palestinian encampment on Harvard Yard, the students say the experience left them feeling disillusioned about their Ivy League education and frustrated with what transpired, but grounded in their activism and largely unscathed. A handful are now pursuing graduate degrees from other elite universities, and others are working. Some are still participating in protests. A pro-Palestinian protest encampment behind a gate of Harvard Yard in April 2024. Andrew Burke-Stevenson for The Boston Globe Advertisement All were eventually awarded their Harvard degrees in the months after their intended graduation, the graduates said. After the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas began, the 2024 tent encampments on Harvard Yard became one of the key symbols of a pro-Palestinian student movement that spread across the nation. At Harvard, both Jewish and Muslim students reported feeling uncomfortable, while a Advertisement On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 people from Israel. Gaza health authorities have said that Israel's retaliatory offensive has The Harvard student protesters agreed days before commencement in 2024 to dismantle the encampment; university leaders Days later, the students found out they wouldn't graduate since they were not in 'good standing' with the university due to multiple campus policy violations related to the encampment. That prompted another wave of outrage among students and faculty, more than 1,000 of whom reportedly Graduating students walked out of the 373nd Commencement at Harvard University to call attention to the plight of Palestinians on May 23, 2024. The university's top governing board rejected the recommendation of faculty to allow 13 pro-Palestinian students who participated in a three-week encampment in Harvard Yard to graduate with their classmates. Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff Some protestors, including Joshi, were allowed to don their caps and gowns at Harvard's 2024 Commencement and walk across the stage. Joshi said she was handed a piece of white cardboard instead of a degree. Others, however, were barred from commencement. Syd Sanders, 23, was told to withdraw from the university (a directive that he says was later dropped) and was banned from graduation. He had several ongoing student disciplinary cases at the time related to what he described as 'a long and storied career' in on-campus activism. 'They kept trying to evict me,' Sanders said in an interview this week, 'They would go by my dorm and be like, 'Why is all your stuff still here?'' Sanders was the final of the 13 students to receive a degree, to his knowledge. Advertisement 'They mailed it to me in February,' Sanders said. In a statement, Harvard spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo said that the university does not comment on student matters and did not further comment for this story. The impact of the withheld degrees varied by graduate. Phoebe Barr, 24, was among the protesters who were placed on an involuntary leave by the university, meaning she lost access to her dorm room and could not work at her on-campus job for the remainder of the semester. 'I was homeless and unemployed very suddenly,' Barr said. She stayed on the couch of someone who offered her a place to crash. Those are the memories of Harvard she wants to recall, she said, the acts of kindness in the community. 'For all the hostility we received, we also saw a real outpouring of support from the community of Harvard students, faculty, and those who lived around us in Cambridge,' she said. Barr was denied access to the Harvard campus at the end of her senior year. Lane Turner/Globe Staff Barr's temporarily withheld history and literature degree also impacted her search for a job after college: She could not list her undergraduate degree as her highest level of education. Not knowing when she would get her degree, she said, was difficult and stressful as she cobbled together cover letters and resumes. To potential employers, she wrote that her degree was still pending. Her degree was conferred in July last year; she got a job at a Boston University library that fall. Joshi's probation was initially to last until May 2025, meaning she would graduate a year later than planned. That timing was a problem: If she weren't in good standing with the university, she'd lose her Harvard fellowship to fund a master's degree at the University of Cambridge in England. Advertisement The funding securing her spot at Cambridge eventually came through after Harvard conferred her degree over the summer. Sanders, however, said that, at least for him, the lack of a degree didn't have any impact on his professional life. He still moved to California and got his dream job as a union organizer. 'I can't imagine a career in college activism was an inhibitor to becoming a union organizer — it was probably an asset," Sanders said. The encampment taught him how to do effective community organizing, lessons he said he is applying today as he helps organize support for immigrants targeted for Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests. 'It was the most sacred moment of community I have ever felt in my life,' Sanders said of the Harvard encampment. 'No regrets.' A protester hung a Palestine flag in the pro-Palestinian encampment in Harvard Yard on May 7, 2024. Lane Turner/Globe Staff Sanders is now an activist in Oakland and is working as a bartender and waiter (he quit his union organizing job). 'Just like everybody else who graduated on time, I'm figuring life out,' Sanders said. He's thinking of applying to grad school or getting another union organizer job; he still participates in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Had the protesters' probation resulted in them walking at graduation this year, they would've been at a much different ceremony. This May, Garber was greeted by 'It was pretty jarring,' said Barr, who attended the commencement to take part in a pro-Palestinian demonstration. 'Last year, he was booed by the audience.' Advertisement While she is glad to see Harvard fighting Trump, she said it does not negate her frustrations with how the university handled the encampment last year. Joshi added that while there is a lot of excitement for Harvard's stance against Trump, the school's stance on free speech and academic freedom still 'rings hollow' to her. She is now finishing a master's degree in sociology at the University of Cambridge — funded by the Harvard fellowship that almost didn't materialize — and writing her dissertation on South Asian involvement in the Palestinian movement in the UK. After graduation, she plans to find legal work at a nonprofit. Overall, she remembers the Harvard protests as a success: They drew attention to the thousands of children who have died in Gaza and will never have the chance to grow up to get a degree, she said. Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Erin Douglas can be reached at
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Fact Check: Bernie Sanders did not say 'Why not both?' to impeaching Trump and deporting Musk
Claim: U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said, "Elon is calling for Trump's impeachment. MAGA is calling for Elon's deportation. Why not both?" Rating: As U.S. President Donald Trump and tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk engaged in a war of words over social media in early June 2025, many people online attributed a quote to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT. According to a Reddit post, Sanders allegedly said: "Elon is calling for Trump's impeachment. MAGA is calling for Elon's deportation. Why not both?" (Reddit user u/Pumuckl4Life) Even though he has been a critic of Trump and Musk, Sanders never said the above words. We found no evidence in his publicized statements, in the news media or on his social media accounts to corroborate the claim. As such, we rate this claim as an incorrect attribution. We reached out to Sanders for comment on whether he made the above statement. A spokesperson from his office denied the above claim. We also looked for examples of Sander's comments to the media by searching for segments of the above quote on Google News. If Sanders had said this in public it would have been widely covered by news media publications. We also found no similar statements on Sander's Senate website or his social media accounts. However, on June 5, the Facebook group U.S. Democratic Socialists did post the statement without attributing it to anyone. Sanders has used similar language. In a June 6 post from his official campaign account on X. Sanders criticized both Trump and Musk by using their arguments to bolster his point: Trump's right: The easiest way to save money is to eliminate the "Billions and Billions" in corporate welfare Elon Musk has received. Musk's right: Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" is a "disgusting abomination" that must be defeated. Let's do both. It'll be a win-win for America! Sanders was referring to Trump's threats to cut off federal subsidies and contracts with Musk's companies, which could cost Musk billions of dollars. He also was referring to Trump's tax and spending bill, which Musk called a "disgusting abomination" on X. Since Trump's inauguration, Sanders has been traveling the country on a "Fighting Oligarchy Tour" looking to build up resistance to the Trump administration. While Sanders did not advocate for Musk's deportation, in February 2020, he did vote to convict Trump in the Senate impeachment trial during his first administration. He also voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial in 2021. Meanwhile in June 2025, Steve Bannon, a former aide to Trump, called for an investigation into Musk's immigration status: "They should initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status, because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately." "Bernie Sanders Brings His Fight against 'Oligarchy' to Philadelphia." WHYY, Accessed 6 June 2025. Booker, Brakkton. "Trump Impeachment Trial Verdict: How Senators Voted." NPR, 13 Feb. 2021. NPR, Breslow, Jason. "In a Break with Trump, Elon Musk Calls the GOP Megabill a 'Disgusting Abomination.'" NPR, 3 June 2025. NPR, Accessed 6 June 2025. Liles, Jordan. "Trump Once Calling Epstein 'fun' and 'Terrific Guy' Resurfaced during Feud with Musk." Snopes, 5 June 2025, Accessed 6 June 2025. "Trump Threatens to Cut off Elon Musk's Federal Subsidies. That Could Cost Tesla and SpaceX Billions." CBS News, 5 June 2025, Accessed 6 June 2025. Pager, Tyler. "Steve Bannon Says He Told Trump to Investigate Elon Musk's Immigration Status." The New York Times, 5 June 2025. Accessed 6 June 2025. "Senator Sanders Votes to Convict President Trump " Senator Bernie Sanders." Senator Bernie Sanders, Accessed 6 June 2025.
