[Pharm-policy] Ron Dellums

[James Love]

http://www.thebody.com/poz/people/07_00/public_eye.html

July 2000

PUBLIC EYE


   Dellums for Dollars

Ex-Representative Ron Dellums, a longtime leftist, now stumps for global
AIDS funding. Is it altruism? Doug Ireland lifts the veil on his
paymasters.

  [snip]


It turns out that Dellums is a highly paid consultant to pharmaceutical
giant Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). When POZ asked him how much BMS was
paying him -- his fee is rumored to be in the mid-six figures -- Dellums
refused to answer, yelling that the question was "insulting." He has
accompanied top BMS executives on junkets to South Africa. And a largely
paper nonprofit that Dellums chairs, the Constituency for Africa, gave
BMS  -- which has made billions from AIDS drugs developed by
taxpayer-funded research -- an award for its "contributions to fighting
AIDS."

Dellums insisted he has only consulted with BMS on its controversial
"Secure the Future" program, through which the company will spend $20
million a year over five years to provide research and training on AIDS
in five Southern African countries. 

   [snip]

But that's not the only conflict in Dellums' portfolio. The
ex-Representative also heads an outfit called Healthcare International
Management Company, which, according to its governmental affairs VP
Charles Stevenson, is trying to set up HMOs in South Africa and other
African countries. Given the appalling history of managed care here,
it's hard to see how this approach would benefit HIVers in South Africa,
whose health care system is already sinking under the weight of the
epidemic.

Dellums' company is, in turn, a subsidiary of a financially troubled
Tennessee-based conglomerate, Access Health Systems, whose CEO, Tony
Cebrun, has what several local reporters told POZ is a "lavish home" in
South Africa. Another subsidiary, Access MedPlus, is the second-largest
subcontractor to the state's TennCare program covering the state's 1.3
million uninsured people. The company has been teetering on the edge of
bankruptcy, prompting numerous suits for nonpayment by health care
providers. Although criticized by state officials for failing to make
mandatory financial disclosures, Cebrun's operation is, according to one
reporter who insisted on anonymity, "politically untouchable" because
"half the black politicians in the state have relatives on its payroll."
One of those politicos is former Rep. Harold Ford Sr., boss of a
notoriously corrupt Memphis-based political machine, who retired from
the House under a hail of subpoenas. Ford brokered the deal that brought
Dellums to Access Health Systems, for which Dellums was paid $1 million,
according to a company source.

Which brings us back to the Dellums-inspired World Bank AIDS Trust Fund.
Under the Leach-Lee legislation, it is the World Bank -- which has long
pressed for managed care in developing countries -- that would determine
AIDS spending. If the Dellums-Cebrun company persuades South Africa to
let it set up HMOs, it stands to make a bundle.

So while the Leach-Lee bill may be better than nothing, the skein of
Dellums' interlocking interests does call to mind the cynical old saw:
He does well by doing good.


-- 
James Love  mailto:love@cptech.org http://www.cptech.org
Consumer Project on Technology, P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
voice 1.202.387.8030  fax  1.202.234.5176