The battle for Missouri’s lucrative prison health care program is under way.
Gov. Mike Parson is looking to settle on a four-year deal with an option of four additional one-year renewals that could be worth $1 billion to the private vendor awarded the contract.
Applicants are lining up local lobbying firms to make their sales pitches.
Among the companies known to have made bids are Virginia-based Centurion, which has similar operations in 17 states and is a subsidiary of Clayton-based Centene Corp., and Pennsylvania-based Wexford Health Sources, which has a history of having provided health services in Illinois.
Also in the running is incumbent Corizon Health, which has held the contract to provide services at the Missouri Department of Corrections for the last two-plus decades. Regarded as the country’s largest for-profit correctional health care provider, Corizon earned more than $147 million for its work in Missouri in 2019.
The possible change in direction for the state could have been triggered by a still pending lawsuit filed by nurses who work in the prison system last year, where they charge they are owed untold millions in back bay by either the state or Corizon.
Some have compared the case to one where a Cole County jury determined that 13,000 current and former correctional officers were owed nearly $114 million in pay they never received for their services rendered. The state has since appealed the verdict.
Corizon’s ties to the state have long run deep, with the company also providing dental, behavioral health and pharmacy services to the state’s 20 prisons.
The 10-year-old company was established when privately held Valitás Health Services Inc. of Creve Coeur and Tennessee-based America Service Group Inc., a provider of prison health services, merged operations.
