AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) President Michael Weinstein, a man accused of fraud and self-promotion, bankrolled the Ohio drug ballot initiative.
Ohioans will have the chance to vote on the Ohio Drug Price Relief Act on the November 2017 ballot, a bill that would require state agencies to pay no more than the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs for prescription drugs.
The Ohio Taxpayers for Lower Drug Prices serves as the main group pushing for the ballot initiative.They claim that the law would save taxpayers money and stop pharmaceutical companies from charging increasingly high prices for medication.
Ohioans Against the Deceptive Rx Ballot Initiative believe that the proposed law could backfire, making drugs more expensive or simply unavailable. The Ohio campaign could become the most costly initiative in Ohio history, exceeding the $64 million failed casino campaign in 2008. The proposed law would affect more than four million Ohioans, including more than three million citizens on Medicaid.
The California-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, led by President Michael Weinstein, remains the ballot initiative’s most significant supporter and benefactor. AHF runs many pharmacies across the United States.
The AHF led a similar ballot initiative in California last November that Californians shot down 53 to 47 percent. Weinstein spent the vast majority of the $19.9 million of the California ballot initiative.
Despite the Ohio Taxpayers for Lower Drug Prices’ name, the organization remains almost entirely bankrolled and run by the Aids Healthcare Foundation. The AHF frequently made six-figure donations to the Ohio Taxpayers for Lower Drug prices over the past two years. Since 2015, the AHF donated over $6,200,000 to the organization.
The AHF worked to gather signatures with the Ohio Taxpayers for Lower Drug Prices to while omitting the fact that the AHF remains nearly the sole funder for the activist group.
AHF President Michael Weinstein rails against the supposed corporate greed of pharmaceutical companies, yet he has repeatedly been accused of fraud, overbilling, and offering kickbacks to his staff.
“While we’ve seen ample evidence that there is seemingly no limit to the corporate greed of pharmaceutical companies, we also know that Americans are tired of feeling afraid every time they go to the doctor or it’s time to get a prescription filled,” said Weinstein. “Astronomical prescription drug prices hurt everyone—except the drug makers’ bottom lines. This has got to stop.”
Three former managers filed a lawsuit against the AHF, alleging that the company paid employees and patients kickbacks for patient referrals to boost funding from federal health programs. AHF allegedly paid employees $100 bonuses for referring patients with positive test results to its clinics. The former managers argue that the kickbacks started in 2010 at the company’s headquarters and spread throughout the country.
The lawsuit claims that the AHF defrauded Medicare and Medicaid $20 million over 12 states.
Weinstein argues that the incentives remain vital to spreading awareness and argues that his organization has done nothing wrong.
The AHF president said in a statement, “Not only has AIDS Healthcare Foundation done nothing wrong, our pro-active approach to finding and linking HIV-positive individuals to lifesaving care and treatment is critical to stopping HIV in this country.”
The former managers recently amended their lawsuit, arguing that they were fired after raising concerns about the kickbacks to their supervisors.
AHF primarily receives its funding through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 340B Drug Discount program which has come under fire from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA). According to reports, the provision “allows pharmacies attached to medical practices serving underprivileged populations to buy drugs directly from manufacturers at, on average, a 35 percent discount but still be reimbursed by insurers for 100 percent of the wholesale price. In effect, 340B allows pharmacies to keep around 35 percent of the pharmaceutical industry’s tab, a roundabout way of subsidizing health care for the poor.”
The CBO reported that the program encourages waste in the hospital medical system while Sen. Grassley chastised 340B participants for purchasing pharmaceuticals at a discount and then reselling them to insured patients at a high rate.
AHF’s budget has ballooned from $300 million to more than $1.4 billion, which is roughly the size of Planned Parenthood. AHF projects that their budget will rise to $2 billion by 2020, giving Weinstein control of a budget nearly half the size of the World Health Organization’s budget.
Fellow AIDS activists frequently accused Michael Weinstein of self-promotion, which might explain why his organization engaged in an Ohio ballot initiative that does not explicitly help those who suffer from AIDS and HIV.
Ernest Hopkins, director of legislative affairs for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, accused Weinstein of rampant fearmongering. Hopkins charged, “It reminds me very much of the Tea Party people with regard to Obamacare.”
Weinstein infamously opposed PrEP, the HIV prevention pill, which he argued would cause a “public-health catastrophe.”
Hopkins criticized Weinstein’s tactics, contending, “If you’re prepared to say whatever you want and lie and demagogue and misrepresent the facts, then you can get a lot of airtime, and you can also persuade a lot of people.”
“If there’s one thing that every aids activist knows,” longtime AIDS activist Peter Staley told Slate, “it’s that Michael Weinstein is not an AIDS activist. Yes, he’s the CEO of the ‘largest AIDS organization in the country’—based on revenue—but from the get-go, his tactic for building this empire has been taking contrarian positions that assure his placement in almost any article that appears about the latest HIV/AIDS debate.”
Weinstein may appear selfless when lobbying for cheaper drug prices in Ohio, however, his AHF would benefit immensely from the Ohio Drug Price Relief Act. The Ohioans Against the Deceptive Rx Ballot Initiative contends that the AHF wrote the ballot initiative to give the AHF and other sponsors of the law significant discounts to lower drug prices, however, they believe that the AHF will not pass the discounted pharmaceuticals to AHF’s patients. Ohioans Against the Ballot also believes that the proposed gives AHF and the law’s other sponsors the right to defend the law against any lawsuit at the Ohio taxpayers’ expense. The Drug Price Relief Act stipulates that Ohio would have to reimburse the AHF’s legal fees whether they win or lose a lawsuit.
AHF and Michael Weinstein have filed litigation against government agencies in multiple states, lawsuits that include three in Ohio.
The Ohio Chamber of Commerce urges citizens to oppose this ballot initiative once it comes up to vote in November 2018. The Chamber wrote, “We unanimously recommend a vote to OPPOSE this ill-conceived and poorly written proposal on the grounds that it could lead to cost shifting to private payers, including employers, resulting in higher health care premiums and out-of-pocket costs; runs totally counter to any model of free markets and smacks of centralized planning; and creates an unprecedented law giving exclusive rights to the proponents to litigate any provision of the proposal that is not implemented to their satisfaction – at taxpayer expense.”
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