PUBLIC EYE
Dellums for Dollars
Ex-Representative Ron Dellums, a longtime leftist, now stumps for global AIDS funding. Is it altruism? Doug Ireland lifts the veil on his paymasters.
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It turns out that Dellums is a highly paid consultant to pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). When POZ asked him how much BMS was paying him -- his fee is rumored to be in the mid-six figures -- Dellums refused to answer, yelling that the question was "insulting." He has accompanied top BMS executives on junkets to South Africa. And a largely paper nonprofit that Dellums chairs, the Constituency for Africa, gave BMS -- which has made billions from AIDS drugs developed by taxpayer-funded research -- an award for its "contributions to fighting AIDS."
Dellums insisted he has only consulted with BMS on its controversial "Secure the Future" program, through which the company will spend $20 million a year over five years to provide research and training on AIDS in five Southern African countries.
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But that's not the only conflict in Dellums' portfolio. The ex-Representative also heads an outfit called Healthcare International Management Company, which, according to its governmental affairs VP Charles Stevenson, is trying to set up HMOs in South Africa and other African countries. Given the appalling history of managed care here, it's hard to see how this approach would benefit HIVers in South Africa, whose health care system is already sinking under the weight of the epidemic.
Dellums' company is, in turn, a subsidiary of a financially troubled Tennessee-based conglomerate, Access Health Systems, whose CEO, Tony Cebrun, has what several local reporters told POZ is a "lavish home" in South Africa. Another subsidiary, Access MedPlus, is the second-largest subcontractor to the state's TennCare program covering the state's 1.3 million uninsured people. The company has been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, prompting numerous suits for nonpayment by health care providers. Although criticized by state officials for failing to make mandatory financial disclosures, Cebrun's operation is, according to one reporter who insisted on anonymity, "politically untouchable" because "half the black politicians in the state have relatives on its payroll." One of those politicos is former Rep. Harold Ford Sr., boss of a notoriously corrupt Memphis-based political machine, who retired from the House under a hail of subpoenas. Ford brokered the deal that brought Dellums to Access Health Systems, for which Dellums was paid $1 million, according to a company source.
Which brings us back to the Dellums-inspired World Bank AIDS Trust Fund. Under the Leach-Lee legislation, it is the World Bank -- which has long pressed for managed care in developing countries -- that would determine AIDS spending. If the Dellums-Cebrun company persuades South Africa to let it set up HMOs, it stands to make a bundle.
So while the Leach-Lee bill may be better than nothing, the skein of Dellums' interlocking interests does call to mind the cynical old saw: He does well by doing good.
In 1995, TBI agents arrested a Nashville woman who admitted forging more than 140 applications for TennCare while working as an independent contractor for OmniCare. Pamela Renee King said she obtained the data contained on the false applications while working as a fitness consultant in the health center at the sprawling Saturn automobile plant in Spring Hill, Tenn. TBI investigator Shana Roberts said King was paid between $13 and $17 for each application. As long as the scam went undisclosed, OmniCare received $111 per patient per month for patients who didn't exist or who were fraudulently enrolled in the program. King was the second OmniCare representative to be caught by TBI agents in 1995.
Harold McGhee, a former employee at the Shelby County Corrections Center, admitted to agents he had enrolled 202 inmates that he knew already had medical coverage and were therefore ineligible for TennCare. Both King and McGhee were convicted of mail fraud and making false statements. Each received a sentence of about a year in prison.
'The Fords had gotten him' Although he wasn't a company officer or a member of OmniCare's board of directors, former Rep. Harold Ford was publicly identified in 1996 by the Commercial Appeal as being associated with OmniCare. Ford, an African-American, was first elected to Congress in 1974, beating a white incumbent.
Ford's district encompassed most of Memphis, which became majority black. Ford had a rocky political career, and he allied himself and his family with Gore. He was indicted on federal bank, mail-fraud and conspiracy charges in 1987, stemming from $1 million of loans he had received from banks controlled by Democratic politician Jake Butcher and his brother C.H. Butcher. The money was loaned for business purposes, but was allegedly converted to personal use by Ford. His first trial resulted in a hung jury. A second jury acquitted him.
When the House banking scandal broke in 1993, it was revealed that Ford had written 388 bad checks totaling $552,447 at the bank between 1988 and 1991. Although he was one of the worst offenders, a special prosecutor's probe found no criminal wrongdoing on Ford's part. Ford retired from Congress in 1996 and was succeeded by his son, Harold Ford Jr., a move that angered some local black leaders who resented the Ford family's belief that the congressional seat belonged to them rather than to the people.
At the time, Ford Jr. was only 24 years old, the youngest member of Congress. It was Harold Ford, Jr. whom Gore picked to make one of the Democratic convention's keynote addresses. In addition to Harold Ford Sr.'s older brother, John, a state senator, other Ford brothers who have been actively involved in family politics include: 1) Joe Ford, who ran for mayor of Memphis in 1999; 2) former state Rep. Emmitt Ford, who served time in a federal prison in the late 1990s for failure to file tax returns on income of $700,000; and 3) Dr. James Ford, an ophthalmologist, a member of the Shelby County Commission and a TennCare provider. A hard-charging young TBI agent, David Loftus, who worked on the Shelby County Corrections Center portion of the OmniCare investigations, told his colleagues he was bound and determined to find out why the Ford family's involvement in OmniCare was not being taken more seriously by the TBI. "The evidence showed that the Fords were up to their eyeballs in OmniCare and yet nobody was holding their feet to the fire," said Loftus.
Even though an assistant U.S. attorney in Memphis warned Loftus to be more discreet "about what he said about the Fords or they will get you," he continued to probe the Ford family's involvement with TennCare. Loftus had nearly finished his two-year stint as a probationary agent with TBI and had recently received an outstanding evaluation from his supervisor, when suddenly he was summoned to TBI headquarters and was summarily fired. No reason was given.