Washington (AP) – Herschel Walker, soccer legend and top Republican Senate candidate in Georgia, is often proud of his work in helping soldiers and veterans combat mental health.
In interviews and election speeches, the former Dallas Cowboy and Haysman Trophy winner receives credit for being established, established, and occasionally worked for a program called Patriot Support. The program, he said, has taken him to military bases around the world.
“About fifteen years ago I started a program called Patriot Support,” Walker said in an interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt in October last year. “People need to know that I started a military program, a military program that treats (thousands of) soldiers a year,” he told Savannah TV on WTGS in February.
But corporate documents, court documents, and Senate revelations reviewed by the Associated Press tell a more complex story. Together they describe a famous speaker who overstepped his duties in a lucrative program that allegedly kidnapped veterans and military personnel while defrauding the government.
The revelation is the latest example of a more complex reality beneath the carefully crafted autobiography Walker presented to voters.
Walker’s campaign will not make him available for an interview.
“So let me find out-you are demonizing Herschel because he has been the face of an organization for 14 years that has helped thousands of mentally ill soldiers,” Walker spokeswoman Mallory Blount said in an e-mailed statement that he also criticized the media. .
Before joining the contest, Walker focused on the past Fight mental health, including allegations of threatening the life of his ex -wife. He notably raised the record of business manAs previously reported by the AP. And his statement that he graduated from the University of Georgia, where he received the bulldogs in the 1980 championship, is also not true. He did not graduate, as first reported in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Political candidates often revel in their stories, and so far, with former President Donald Trump’s support in the race for the Republican Senate nomination, Walker’s turbulent background, lies and contradictions are worthless. But if he wins Tuesday in the Democrat-dominated primacy, Democrats are likely to highlight the unpopular part of his history that is emerging as one of the fiercest contests in the fall for control of the U.S. Senate.
“Walker has a problematic history, most Republicans have already sounded the alarm,” he said. “There’s a lot of discussion about his record in the general election because voters deserve to know the truth.”
Long before his candidacy, Walker received approval to work with the Patriots. His visits to the bases were announced in military newspapers. And in 2014, as a celebrity contestant on the Food Network Game Show, Walker won a $ 50,000 prize to donate to his chosen charity, Patriot Support.
But supporting the patriots is not charity. This is a veteran -specific profitable program offered by Universal Health Services, one of the largest walker networks in the United States. Walker was not even the founder of the program. It was created 11 years before Universal Health Services announced it was hiring a Walker speaker who paid him $ 331,000 last year.
And the $ 50,000 prize he won from the Food Network didn’t go to support the Patriots, it was given to the Paralympic Veterans Program on behalf of Patriot Support.
The court proceedings, meanwhile, offer a more disturbing picture of his care for veterans and military personnel.
A large civil lawsuit filed by the Justice Department and nearly two dozen states against Universal Health Services argues that support for the Patriots is part of the company’s broader effort to deceive the government.
Prosecutors say Universal Health Services and its affiliates are aggressively pushing government -funded insurers for the hospital’s mental health care to generate revenue. This is because, unlike standard private insurers, government plans do not limit the length of hospital stay for psychiatric care until specific criteria are met, making such patients more profitable, he said. of the government.
To that end, the company urged mental health personnel to misdiagnose patients and falsify records in order to hospitalize those who do not need them, according to court records. In other cases, they failed to release those no longer in need of hospitalization, the Justice Department reported.
Long 2016 BuzzFeed Site Survey This includes interviews with former patients, including a veteran, who said they went to Universal Health Service for counseling or counseling just to find themselves under the supervision of an inpatient, sometimes against their will.
According to court documents, special attention is being paid to veterans and military personnel.
The company hired “military allies” to visit bases and maintain contact with military medical personnel, managers of medical facilities and clinics, according to court documents.
“To maximize the flow of military patients, UHS is involved in an aggressive campaign … to commercialize the‘ Patriot Support Program, ’” said an informant from the company that runs the admissions program in Utah Hospital. in a court document in 2014..
As a spokesperson for celebrities, Walker participated in a public relations blitz.
The company made $ 122 million in payments in 2020 to the Department of Justice and Coalition of States.
Universal Health Services spokeswoman Jane Crawford denied the whistleblower’s report about an aggressive marketing campaign to include service members in the company’s patriot support program. He also said some of the alleged actions took place before Universal Health Services was sold to a group of hospitals managed by Ascend Health in 2012. Ascend Health runs a veteran-like program called Freedom Care, represented by Walker.
The universal health services also denies the government’s broader allegations, saying they have agreed on a solution to “avoid the ongoing costs and uncertainty of litigation.”
While Walker claimed his role in supporting the Patriots during the election campaign, there is no suggestion that he was directly involved in any wrongdoing at the hospitals. The company refused to renew its contract this year and removed Walker’s detailed bio from the Patriot Support website.
“Herschel Walker was the national spokesperson for our campaign against stigma from 2010 to 2021,” said Crawford, company spokesman. “As a mental health attorney, Mr. Walker embarked on his personal journey to raising awareness and enlisting the help of others. He no longer has a contract with Universal Health Care Service ”.
Despite the ongoing flow of revelations about Walker, including supporting the Patriots in his role, some Republican strategists suspect they are hurting his chances in the general election with Senator Rafael Warnock, the first black senator. of Georgia.
Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican strategist who founded his company in Georgia, said Walker was “like God” in the state.
“There are still kids wearing Herschel Walker soccer jerseys 40 years after playing at the University of Georgia.” So the negative information will be heard with a lot of skepticism. ”“ That doesn’t mean some of the allegations aren’t. penetrate to some degree, but they won’t be hurt like a normal candidate. ”
Source: Huffpost
