Kennedy Continues to Refuse to Return Donations From Corrupt Health Care Provider: Claims of Negligence Continue

[May 6, 2020 – Longport, New Jersey] It has now been 14 days since the New Jersey Globe first reported that the Kennedy campaign had received thousands of dollars in bundled donations from Wellpath executives and that Amy Kennedy’s husband, former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, joined the Wellpath Board of Directors in February 2020, the same time these donations were provided to the campaign.

As revealed in Kennedy’s FEC quarterly fundraising report, her campaign accepted funds from various top executives at Wellpath, a health care contractor with a history of providing substandard medical care to a network of for-profit prisons and notorious for providing fatally poor care in immigration detention centers where ICE locks up thousands of immigrants. Wellpath has been the subject of more than 70 wrongful death lawsuits and 1,395 federal lawsuits in over 120 locations in 32 states.

Since the release of the initial Kennedy/Wellpath report it has also been learned that in New Jersey, Wellpath, which provides medical services for New Jersey’s Hudson County Jail, recently lost two nurses, members of ASFCME in April who both died of from complications of the coronavirus.  Most recently, in Miami, Florida, Wellpath has been blamed for a lack of COVID-19 testing and medical services related to its jail system in Broward County, which has been described as “horrific, with outrageous medical neglect, insufficient nutrition, unsanitary conditions.” Additional reports have also issued on Wellpath’s ill-fated response to COVID-19 being filed in Detroit and Santa Barbara.
“Amy Kennedy needs to return her Wellpath money and must come clean on how her husband obtained this Board seat,” stated Brigid Callahan Harrison, Democratic Candidate for the 2^nd Congressional District of New Jersey. “It was a morally reprehensible choice to accept money from a company like Wellpath. Their plagued history and connection to ICE detention centers would give anyone in their right mind pause. Amy’s silence on this issue only begs more questions, and now with COVID-19 it seems each passing day brings yet another Wellpath tragedy and more concern.”
Concerns regarding Wellpath go far beyond their COVID-19 response and also include the following:
·     Wellpath has used campaign contributions to pay off elected officials who reward the company with lucrative government contracts.

·     In Louisiana, Wellpath, then branded as Correct Care Solutions, was hired through a closed-door contract-awarding process that drew criticism from city officials and the New Orleans Office of Inspector General. The company’s practices at the Orleans Justice Center have since been cited in wrongful death lawsuits and in reports by a federally appointed team that monitors the jail as part of the consent decree.

·     Fulton County, GA, terminated its contract with Wellpath after five people died within a span of 75 days in 2017.

·     A lawsuit filed in May 2018 against the company alleged that in Douglas County, Nebraska more than a dozen people were denied medical treatment for serious ailments, including a stroke, a broken hip and lung cancer. According to the lawsuit, Wellpath’s contract with the county detention center created “perverse incentives” because the company “makes more money under the contract when they refuse to provide inmates with necessary medical care.”

·     In August 2018, a video was released as part of a wrongful death lawsuit against Wellpath that showed a detainee at a Westchester, NY, county jail collapsing on the ground and being wheeled back to his cell in a wheelchair. He died soon after from a heart attack, and a state legislator concluded that “looking at this video, it would take more persuasion to get me to go along with the point of view that we should have CCS [Wellpath] or another for-profit entity running the medical department [inside the jail].”

·     In November 2018, Senator Elizabeth Warren and ten other United States Senators sent a letter to Mr. Dominics expressing concern about the poor medical conditions at the notorious Adelanto ICE Processing Center and highlighted a New York Times article that describes detainees staging hunger strikes in protest of their treatment.

·     In December 2018, US Senator Kamala Harris and 23 members of the California congressional delegation sent a letter to the Acting Director of ICE expressing “strong concern about the conditions and oversight of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration detention facilities,” including the Adelanto Center where Wellpath was the contracted health care provider.

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The Kennedy campaign responded: “Brigid’s negative attacks are just a sad and desperate attempt to deflect from the fact that she has refused to take the End Citizens United pledge not to take corporate PAC money. Amy took that pledge at the beginning of February, and the people of South Jersey are still waiting for Brigid to do the same. Deflect and attack seems to be Brigid’s favorite mode of communication. It’s really sad that this is the campaign that Brigid is choosing to run at a time when people need positive leadership that brings people together.”

The Harrison campaign responded with a statement from senior adviser Matthew Frankel: “Democrats like Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren have already questioned Wellpath’s motives and for good reason – Wellpath has 70 wrongful death claims. They are clearly a scandalous for-profit health care company with a long history of concerns operating both for-profit prisons and ICE detention centers. Amy’s husband Patrick just happens to join the Wellpath board the same time Amy receives thousands of bundled dollars from the Company’s executives. Why would she associate herself with these folks? Its because of money. This is clearly a corrupt relationship and Amy is showing an astounding lack of a moral compass. Let’s keep it simple, Amy needs to give the money back.”