Cornyn's Corporate Sponsors: Industry Breakdowns: Health Care

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Cornyn's Corporate Sponsors

Industry Breakdowns: Health Care

The health industry provided 10 percent of Cornyn’s big-check money. Doctors, led by the Texas Medical Association ($138,429), were the largest source of this money. Health Product interests were the next largest subsector, led by social conservative James Leininger ($146,500), who owns high-tech hospital bed company Kinetic Concepts. Cornyn received another $17,004 from ephedrine diet product interests. Hospital and Clinic interests came next, led by $45,000 from a Memorial Hermann Healthcare System executive.⁸ The Texas Dental Association ($60,000) and the Texas Optometric Association ($30,000) dominated Non-Doctor Health Professionals. Nursing home interests, led by Sensitive Care, Inc. ($13,000) and the Texas Health Care Association ($12,500), led Nursing Home giving. Finally, Columbia/HCA ($8,500) and Aetna ($3,000) led health insurance interests.⁹

Interest Contributions Percent

Physicians
$410,918

43%

Health Products
$167,004

17%

Hospitals/Clinics
$127,350

13%

Other Health Professionals
$118,701

12%

Nursing Homes/Home Care
$76,200

8%

HMOs
$22,500

2%

Other
$38,000

4%

TOTAL:

$960,673

100%

Sensitive Contributions

Cornyn’s top donor from the embattled nursing home industry is Sensitive Care, Inc. ($13,000).¹ Its bedpan hit the fan in 1997, as the Texas Legislature strengthened state nursing home oversight and the attorney general campaign got under way. The company paid $1.4 million in June 1997 to settle a lawsuit over 94-year-old Inez Hagans, who waited two days for treatment after breaking her neck in a Sensitive Care facility.² Four months later a jury hit Sensitive Care with $250 million in punitive damages for letting 80-year-old Woodrow Bryan Sellers starve to death after he got a mouth infection.³ Then-Attorney General Dan Morales also sued Sensitive Care in 1997, charging it with failing to protect three female residents from sexual abuse by a male resident who had a history of sexually inappropriate behavior. The case was closed in 1998 with the company charged with $10,000 in penalties and $5,500 in attorney fees.

How Sensitive Care would have fared under Cornyn is unknown because the Feds cracked down on the company as Cornyn took office in January 1999. Accusing Sensitive Care of fraudulent Medicare billings, the federal government froze its Medicare payments. This forced the Texas Department of Human Services to takeover Sensitive Care’s 13 nursing homes.
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1 All but $2,500 of this money flowed before Cornyn took office.
2 “Bedford Nursing Home Agrees To Pay $1.4 Million,” Fort Worth Star Telegram, June 3, 1998.
3 “Underfed Man’s Relatives Win $250 Million Jury Award,” Associated Press, October 17, 1998.

8 Next came Accident and Injury Pain Centers owner Robert M. Smith ($32,000) and the Texas Hospital Association ($27,500).
9 This subsector just counts donors that are predominantly engaged in health insurance. Interests with broader insurance lines fall into the Insurance category.