Herschel Walker’s ties to veterans program come under scrutiny | National

“About 15 years ago I started a program called Patriot Support,” Walker said in an interview with conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt last October. “People need to know that I started a military program, a military program that treats (thousands) of soldiers a year,” he told Savannah TV station WTGS in February.

But corporate documents, court filings and Senate disclosures reviewed by The Associated Press tell a more complicated story. Together, they portray a famous spokesperson who exaggerated his role in a for-profit scheme that allegedly abused veterans and military personnel while defrauding the government.

The revelation marks the latest example of a much more complex reality that lurks beneath the carefully curated autobiography Walker presented to voters.

Walker’s campaign would not make him available for an interview.

“So let me get this — you are demonizing Herschel for being the face of an organization for 14 years that has helped tens of thousands of soldiers with mental illness,” Walker spokeswoman Mallory Blount said in a statement. an emailed statement that also criticized the media. .

During a campaign stop on Saturday, Walker said the allegations against the program were a “concern” but added he was not sure if they were true. Then he changed the subject.

“I win this election. People know I win it,” Walker told reporters.

Even before entering the race, Walker drew attention to his past mental health problems, as well as allegations that he threatened the life of his ex-wife. He is dramatically inflated his record as a businessman, as the AP previously reported. And his claim that he graduated at the top of his class from the University of Georgia, where he led the Bulldogs to a championship in 1980, was also false. He did not graduate, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution first reported.

Political candidates often gild their stories, and so far in the race for the Republican Senate nomination with the backing of former President Donald Trump, Walker’s troubled track record, lies and contradictions have not had a price. But if he wins Tuesday’s primary, in which he holds a commanding lead, Democrats will likely highlight unflattering parts of his story in what promises to be one of the fiercest fall contests, with control of the US Senate hanging in the balance.

“Walker has a troubled record, which a lot of Republicans have already sounded the alarm bells for,” said JB Poersch, chairman of the Senate Majority PAC, a campaign arm of Senate Democrats that pays millions of dollars. in attack advertisements. of the discussion on his record will continue in the general election because voters deserve to know the truth.

Long before his candidacy, Walker received plaudits for his work with Patriot Support. His visits to bases were touted in military press releases. And in 2014, as a celebrity contestant on a Food Network game show, Walker won a $50,000 prize to donate to the charity of his choice, Patriot Support.

But Patriot Support is not a charity. It is a for-profit program specifically marketed for veterans that is offered by Universal Health Services, one of the largest hospital chains in the United States. Nor was Walker the founder of the program. It was created 11 years before Universal Health Services said it hired Walker as its spokesperson, who paid him a salary of $331,000 last year.

And the $50,000 prize he won from the Food Network did not go to Patriot Support, but was instead donated to a Paralympic veterans program on behalf of Patriot Support.

Court documents, meanwhile, offer a much more disturbing picture of his care for veterans and service members.

A sweeping civil case brought against Universal Health Services by the Justice Department and nearly two dozen states alleges Patriot Support was part of a larger effort by the company to defraud the government.

Prosecutors allege Universal Health Services and its affiliates aggressively pushed people with government-sponsored insurance into inpatient mental health care to generate revenue. Indeed, unlike typical private insurers, government schemes do not limit the length of hospital stays for psychiatric care as long as specific criteria are met, making such patients more profitable, the government claimed.

To achieve this goal, the company pushed staff at its mental health facilities to misdiagnose patients and falsify documents in order to hospitalize those who did not need it, according to court records. In other cases, they did not discharge those who no longer needed hospitalization, according to the DOJ.

A long year 2016 survey by the BuzzFeed website included interviews with former patients, including a veteran, who said they went to universal health services seeking consultation or advice to end up in hospital, sometimes against their will.

Veterans and service members were given special attention, according to court documents.

The company hired “military liaisons” to visit bases and develop relationships with military medical personnel, treatment center commanders and clinicians, according to court documents.

“To maximize the flow of military patients, UHS has engaged in an aggressive campaign … to market its ‘Patriotic Support Program,'” said a company whistleblower who ran the admissions program in a Utah hospital in a 2014 court document.

As a celebrity spokesperson, Walker was part of the PR blitz.

Universal Health Services reached a $122 million settlement in 2020 with the Justice Department and the coalition of states. The company denies the government’s allegations and said it agreed to the settlement to “avoid the ongoing costs and uncertainty of ongoing litigation”.

Jane Crawford, a spokesperson for the company, also denied the whistleblower’s account of an aggressive marketing campaign to lure military members into the company’s Patriot Support program. She also said some of the alleged conduct occurred before Universal Health Services purchased a group of hospitals operated by Ascend Health in 2012. Ascend Health ran a similar program for veterans called Freedom Care, of which Walker was also a spokesperson.

Although Walker touted his role with Patriot Support during the campaign trail, there’s no suggestion he was directly involved in wrongdoing at hospitals. The company declined to renew his contract this year, and a detailed biography of Walker was removed from Patriot Support’s website.

“Herschel Walker was the national spokesperson for our anti-stigma campaign from 2010 to 2021,” Crawford, the company’s spokeswoman, said in a statement. “As a mental health advocate, Mr. Walker shared his personal journey to raise awareness and encourage others to seek help. He is no longer under contract with Universal Health Services.

Walker acknowledged on Saturday that he did not create Patriot Support. But he told reporters he started Ascend Health’s Freedom Care program in 2007.

But government documents show Freedom Care was developed by the company in 2006, a year before Walker claimed to have created it. Meanwhile, an archived company website lists Walker as a spokesperson. And a US military press release about the program says Walker didn’t join until 2008, two years after it was developed.

Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican strategist who founded his company in Georgia, said Walker was “like a god” in the state and doubted anything could hurt his chances in a general election with Senator Raphael Warnock, who is Georgia’s first black senator. .

“There are still kids who will wear Herschel Walker football shirts some 40 years after playing for the University of Georgia. So negative news will be heard with a heavy dose of skepticism,” Ayres said. That doesn’t mean some allegations won’t penetrate somewhat, but they won’t do as much damage as a normal candidate.”