Superior HealthPlan CEO Mark Sanders was fired on Thursday, a day after lawmakers questioned him on his company’s surveillance of patients, journalists and lawmakers that precipitated a state investigation into the company’s practices, the Dallas Morning News reported.
In an explosive meeting of the House Committee on Delivery of Government Efficiency on Wednesday on Medicaid procurement, Sanders acknowledged that the group had hired private investigators to get information on journalists, lawmakers and patients with pending claims when he came on as CEO in 2017, though he said that the company has ended that practice.
“The conduct highlighted yesterday during the course of the Texas House Committee hearing is not reflective of our values nor is it a practice Centene’s current leadership condones,” Centene, Superior’s parent company, said in a statement to Morning News. “To this end, Mark Sanders is no longer with our organization.”
At the time Superior began conducting background checks, its parent company, Centene, was facing a lawsuit after the Morning News published an award-winning eight-part exposé about how health insurers, including Superior, repeatedly denied or delayed claims for poor Texans on Medicaid who were critically ill while reaping billions of dollars in profits.
According to documents obtained by the Morning News, Superior ordered background checks on one of the reporters behind that series, J. David McSwane, and on the patients and health care providers mentioned in the article. Its reports included photos of houses and credit checks.
Other targets of investigations included then-Sen. Dawn Buckingham, R-Lakeway, who is now the Texas Land Commissioner, and Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, the chair of the DOGE committee who confronted Sanders on Wednesday.
Hours before Sanders’s firing, Attorney General Ken Paxton announced that his office is investigating whether the company illegally spied on or blackmailed private citizens as part of that effort.
“The allegations concerning Superior’s actions, such as actions that were characterized as potentially blackmailing lawmakers to secure state contracts and surveilling private citizens to avoid paying legitimate claims, are deeply troubling,” Paxton said in a prepared statement on Wednesday. “I will get to the bottom of this, uncover any illegal activity, and hold bad actors responsible. Justice will be served.”
Capriglione told the Morning News Thursday it was good that Centene fired Sanders, but he said the state’s investigation must proceed.
“When this happens, it’s a culture within the company,” he said. “This company is likely to have known about his actions before yesterday, and I think that has to be investigated as well.”
