The $10 Million That Never Reached the Children It Was Meant For
How a Medicaid overbilling settlement ended up funding a political campaign — and why a sitting U.S. Senator has still not called for the record to be opened
By Eric J. Lullove, DPM — for Blue Amp Media
Every dollar recovered from a Medicaid contractor that overbilled the public is, by law and by purpose, a dollar owed back to the people the program serves. In Florida, that means low-income children, medically fragile adults, and the safety-net providers who care for them. So when $10 million of a Medicaid fraud recovery is traced not into patient care but into a political committee that spent it defeating ballot initiatives, the question is not a partisan one. It is a health-care integrity question: who is entitled to money clawed back from a Medicaid contractor, and what happens when officials treat it as discretionary cash?
That is the core of what has become known as the Hope Florida scandal — and it now sits at the center of Florida’s 2026 U.S. Senate race.
The money and where it came from
The chain begins with Centene, the nation’s largest Medicaid managed-care company. Centene was accused of overbilling Florida’s Medicaid program — specifically, of its former pharmacy benefit manager keeping money owed to the state. The company settled with Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) for roughly $67 million. Of that, about $57 million was characterized as repayment of the Medicaid dollars themselves, with an additional sum offered to cover other alleged damages.12
This is ordinary, if unglamorous, health-care enforcement. Managed-care overbilling is one of the most persistent problems in the Medicaid program, and recoveries like this exist precisely to make the program — and its beneficiaries — whole.
What happened next was not ordinary. Instead of the full recovery flowing back through AHCA to serve its statutory purpose, $10 million was directed to the Hope Florida Foundation, the direct-support nonprofit tied to First Lady Casey DeSantis’s signature Hope Florida initiative. A direct-support organization of that kind is bound by Florida law to specific transparency obligations — a published mission, a multi-year plan, a code of ethics, public tax records, and annual audits. During legislative questioning, lawmakers noted the foundation appeared not to have met several of those requirements.3
From a children’s charity to a political committee
The $10 million did not stay at Hope Florida long. According to a Florida House inquiry led by Republican Rep. Alex Andrade of Pensacola, the foundation transferred the money to two nonprofits — Secure Florida’s Future and Save Our Society from Drugs. Those groups, in turn, routed roughly $8.5 million to Keep Florida Clean, a political committee then chaired by James Uthmeier, at the time Gov. Ron DeSantis’s chief of staff.45
Keep Florida Clean spent heavily against two measures on Florida’s November 2024 ballot: Amendment 3, which would have legalized recreational marijuana, and Amendment 4, which would have restored abortion rights in the state constitution. Amendment 3 drew 56 percent support but fell short of Florida’s 60 percent threshold.5
Andrade’s assessment was blunt. He described the transfers as Medicaid funds steered through intermediary organizations into a political committee, and told a House Health Care Budget Subcommittee hearing that he believed the transaction was illegal.4
The DeSantis administration disputes the framing. AHCA’s general counsel wrote to legislative leaders arguing that the $10 million came from the portion of the Centene settlement covering “other alleged damages” rather than recouped Medicaid dollars, and that the law does not prohibit negotiating settlement conditions requiring a released party to take actions beyond paying money to the state. In other words: the administration’s position is that this was not, strictly, Medicaid money being diverted.6
That distinction — whether the $10 million was recovered Medicaid funding or a separate damages payment — is the pivot on which much of the legal argument turns. It has not been resolved in public. And it is precisely the kind of question a complete evidentiary record would settle.
Where Ashley Moody fits
Ashley Moody was Florida’s attorney general when the Centene settlement was finalized. She was later appointed by Gov. DeSantis to the U.S. Senate seat vacated when Marco Rubio became Secretary of State, and she is now running in 2026 to hold it. Uthmeier succeeded her as attorney general.7
Reporting by CBS News Miami stated that Moody’s office signed off on the settlement without imposing the safeguards or oversight her office would ordinarily require to ensure recovered funds were properly spent — the same kind of guidance, critics note, that the attorney general’s office routinely provides to other parties. Moody has not, according to that reporting, answered direct questions from journalists or from Andrade about what she knew regarding the eventual political use of the funds or whether her office coordinated with the governor’s office. Her declining to engage those questions is not, by itself, evidence of wrongdoing — but it leaves the public without an account from the one office positioned to give one.8
Her campaign, for its part, has characterized the settlement as an AHCA agreement negotiated and settled through AHCA and outside counsel, and has said the underlying information is already public. It is a defense of process, not a rebuttal of the money trail.
The report no one has seen
A Leon County grand jury was convened to investigate the Hope Florida transactions. As of this writing, no indictments have been issued, and no grand jury report has been publicly released. Whether a final report has even been completed remains unconfirmed.9
Here the accountability question sharpens. The Florida Center for Government Accountability has said publicly that Moody is likely objecting to the release of the grand jury investigation. Democratic Senate candidate Alex Vindman has gone further, saying he suspects Moody is the reason the report has not been made public and challenging her to call for its release: if she has nothing to hide, he argues, she should demand the record come out.1011
Moody’s campaign says the opposite — that she has had no role in any grand jury proceedings and would welcome the report’s release. Those two accounts sit in tension, and only one point is independently verifiable: to date, Moody has not publicly called for the report to be released. She may have sound legal reasons for that, or none at all; the record does not yet say. But for a former state attorney general now seeking a full Senate term, whose office finalized the settlement at the origin of this money, whether she asks for the record to come out is a fair question for voters to weigh.11
The remedy is not rhetorical. A grand jury report — or a clear statement from the state attorney on its status — would establish, on the record, whether recovered Medicaid-adjacent funds were lawfully redirected or improperly converted to political use. Every official with the standing to seek that record and declining to do so is making a choice about how much the public gets to know.
Why this is a health-care story, not just a political one
It is easy to file Hope Florida under campaign-season intrigue. That would be a mistake. The mechanism at issue — a Medicaid contractor’s overbilling recovery, redirected away from the program that was defrauded — strikes at the trust that makes Medicaid enforcement possible in the first place. Recoveries exist so that beneficiaries and the taxpayers who fund their care are made whole. When those dollars are treated as a flexible pool for other purposes, the loss is not abstract: it is care not delivered, oversight not exercised, and a precedent set that settlement money can be steered wherever the politically powerful prefer.
Florida recovered money because a company took more than it was owed from a program built for the vulnerable. The public is owed a straightforward accounting of where that money went, and why. Until the record is opened, the most consequential question remains unanswered — and the responsibility for opening it rests with the officials who have the standing to ask.
Cliff’s Note:
This one’s free. On purpose.
Ten million dollars clawed back from a Medicaid contractor never made it to the kids it was owed to. It went through a foundation, through two nonprofits, and $8.5 million of it landed in a political committee fighting Amendment 4.
A Republican legislator traced it and called it illegal. A grand jury looked at it. The report is still sealed.
Ashley Moody’s office signed the settlement. She says she’d welcome the report’s release. She’s never asked for it.
Dr. Eric Lullove laid the whole thing out. No paywall, because every voter in Florida should be able to read it before they vote.
Paid subscribers are the reason I can do that. On sale for $36 a year. That’s the whole pitch.
Live with Alex Vindman at 4:30 Eastern today. Bring a question.
—Cliff
References
1. “A developing political scandal in Florida has Gov. Ron DeSantis on the defensive.” NPR, April 24, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/24/nx-s1-5368535/ron-desantis-florida-governor-political-scandal
2. “Florida Medicaid regulator offers explanation of scrutinized $10M Hope Florida donation.” News Service of Florida (via Yahoo News). https://www.yahoo.com/news/florida-medicaid-regulator-offers-explanation-213226338.html
3. “Medicaid settlement sparks controversy over $10 million donation to Hope Florida program.” CBS News Miami. https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/medicaid-settlement-sparks-controversy-over-10-million-donation-to-hope-florida-program
4. “A developing political scandal in Florida has Gov. Ron DeSantis on the defensive.” NPR, April 24, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/24/nx-s1-5368535/ron-desantis-florida-governor-political-scandal
5. “DeSantis lashes out over Hope Florida: GOP House leaders ‘stabbing voters in the back.’” Florida Today (via Yahoo News). https://www.yahoo.com/news/desantis-lashes-over-hope-florida-164309452.html
6. “Florida Medicaid regulator offers explanation of scrutinized $10M Hope Florida donation.” News Service of Florida (via Yahoo News). https://www.yahoo.com/news/florida-medicaid-regulator-offers-explanation-213226338.html
7. “DeSantis-appointed U.S. senator scores major endorsement ahead of 2026 special election.” Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/desantis-appointed-us-senator-scores-major-endorsement-ahead-2026-special-election-tremendous-job
8. “Florida Senator Ashley Moody faces renewed scrutiny over her role in Hope Florida scandal.” CBS News Miami. https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/florida-senator-ashley-moody-faces-renewed-scrutiny-over-her-role-in-hope-florida-scandal/
9. “Alex Vindman demands Sen. Ashley Moody call for release of Hope Florida grand jury report.” WUSF / News Service of Florida, July 31, 2026. https://www.wusf.org/politics-issues/2026-07-31/alex-vindman-demands-sen-ashley-moody-call-for-release-hope-florida-grand-jury-report
10. “Hope Florida scandal flares again during closed court fight.” WCTV / Gray Florida Capital Bureau, July 30, 2026. https://www.wcjb.com/2026/07/30/hope-florida-scandal-flares-again-grand-jury-completes-investigation/
11. “Vindman presses Moody to support release of Hope Florida grand jury report.” FOX 35 Orlando, July 2026. https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/vindman-presses-moody-support-release-hope-florida-grand-jury-report
Characterizations of intent and legality in this article reflect the stated positions of the parties named and remain, where noted, contested and unproven. Where reporting is attributed to a specific outlet, the underlying facts are as that outlet reported them.
Dr. Lullove is the Chief Executive and Medical Officer of the West Boca Center for Wound Healing in Coconut Creek, FL. He is the Contributing Medical Editor for Blue Amp Media.
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