uring a hearing on April 9, 2025, Florida lawmakers pieced together an elaborate money trail from the former owner of prison and jail medical giant Centurion Health, which pumped $10 million into an ultimately successful effort by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to tank a 2024 ballot initiative legalizing marijuana use and possession.

Centene Corp. was Centurion’s owner from 2018 to 2023, overlapping the period from 2016 to 2021 when it was accused of overbilling Florida for providing managed care services under the state Medicaid program. Centene also owned Centurion Health which had a contract worth $1.639 billion to provide health care to Florida state prisoners. To settle the overbilling charges, Centene agreed in September 2024 to a $67,048,611 payment—$10 million of which Shevaun Harris, Secretary of the state Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), directed the company to pay directly to Hope Florida Foundation, a nonprofit run by DeSantis’ wife, Casey DeSantis.

The foundation’s stated mission is to help low-income Floridians meet medical expenses. But Hope Florida then wrote two $5 million checks the following month to political action committees allied with the Governor’s effort to beat back Proposition 3, the proposed constitutional amendment that would have expanded legal marijuana use and possession.

A 2016 ballot initiative had already legalized medical marijuana, and it was the state’s largest vendor, Trulieve, which put up most of the money to back Proposition 3. DeSantis said that state licensing had given the firm and its limited number of competitors a head start, which they were leveraging like a “cartel” to monopolize marijuana sales in the state. Backers of the amendment countered that the Governor was in the pocket of hemp and CBD retailers, who donated $5 million to the state GOP after he vetoed a hemp ban in July 2024. DeSantis was also sitting on 22 applications from new medical marijuana vendors in early 2025, raising doubts about his professed “cartel” fears.

The recent hearing disclosed that Harris never collected Centene’s $10 million before it went to Hope Florida. That irked state House Health Care Budget Subcommittee Chairman Alex Andrade (R-Pensacola), who said it was “probably illegal.” Harris took umbrage, calling it “sad” that Andrade would question the foundation’s motives.

But the congressman was unmoved, telling Harris: “I still can’t understand how it is featured so heavily in the state’s largest contract, yet I can’t get an answer as to exactly how Hope Florida is operating.” Hope Florida founder Casey DeSantis is considering a run to replace her term-limited husband in the 2026 gubernatorial election. See: Settlement Agreement, Centene Corp. and State of Fla. (Sep. 27, 2024).

Centene has also sued the Human Rights Defense Center, publisher of Prison Legal News, to prevent us from filing public records requests to discover how good or bad the health care they provide Florida prisoners actually is. That lawsuit remains pending.  

Additional sources: Florida Phoenix, Politico, Slate, Tallahassee Democrat, Tampa Bay Times