Josh Hawley flattened for ignoring massive medical insurance fraud when he was attorney general

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) was raked over the coals over the weekend by his hometown newspaper which accused him of ignoring his duties when he was Missouri's attorney general because he was too busy working on raising his national profile.

According to the editorial board of St. Louis Post Dispatch, Hawley dropped the ball when it came to going after executives at a Christian-backed medical insurance company that was accused of defrauding customers.

At issue are accusations lodged against Missouri-based Medical Cost Sharing Inc. which was finally shut down by federal regulators after Hawley and his two successors, Republicans Eric Schmitt and current AG Andrew Bailey, failed to take action.

As the editors wrote, Hawley and Schmitt, who is now the junior senator representing Missouri, did nothing because they "were both too busy with national ideological crusades."

According to the editorial, "Medical Cost Sharing Inc. was essentially a health insurance company. Members paid premiums in exchange for the promise that any future medical bills would be covered — but under the auspices of a Christian-focused nonprofit."

It added, "The Justice Department alleges that using various excuses, the organization routinely refused to pay claims for long-time members who had in some cases been paying as much as $750 a month in premiums for years. Many were left holding five-figure medical bills as the company’s owners pocketed millions. Following FBI raids of the company in December, a judge in January issued an injunction freezing the company’s finances pending further investigation."

Noting that the first allegations against the company were made when Hawley was the AG, the editorial pointed out, "Hawley, who won the office in 2016 with a campaign decrying “ladder-climbing” by politicians, was busy climbing toward the Senate (in large part, ironically enough, by joining a partisan lawsuit against the federal government that would have limited Missourians’ health care options).

Schmitt was also called out for kicking the can down the road to his successor who also did nothing.

Summing up, the editors wrote, "So it took the feds to do the job that three Republican state attorneys general couldn’t be bothered with, because they were too busy feeding red meat to the base. What a perfect illustration of how ill-served Missourians are by an important office that seems more focused on electioneering than upholding the law."

You can read the article here.