The federal trial for Chicago-based HMO Amerigroup Corporation -- who has been charged with denying pregnant women and seriously ill people health care coverage -- began Wednesday, the Chicago Tribune reports. According to the Tribune, the company through its subsidiary Amerigroup Illinois from 1996 through 2005 received about $250 million in Medicaid funds, which were to be used to provide health care to low-income residents (Bush, Chicago Tribune, 10/5). In 2002, Cleveland Tyson, the company's former vice president of government relations, filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the company for allegedly choosing to provide health care coverage to healthy individuals and discriminating against pregnant women in their third trimester and seriously ill people to avoid paying for expensive health care services, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sam Cole said, "If [Amerigroup] enrolled someone who was pregnant or sick, the HMO knew it would have to spend more money to care for them," adding, "It's about discrimination. It's about profit. It's about greed." David Adams, an attorney representing State Attorney General Lisa Madigan's (D) office, said in his opening statement that while the company took in about $250 million in Medicaid funds, it paid out $131 million for patient health care costs (Korecki, Chicago Sun-Times, 10/5). Dan Voelker, an attorney for Amerigroup, said the company did seek to reduce the enrollment of pregnant women in their third trimester, but officials from the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services -- which regulated Medicaid funds to Amerigroup -- were aware of the practice. He added that the company avoided pregnant women in their third trimester because they were concerned the women would switch physicians (Chicago Tribune, 10/5). However, attorneys for the plaintiffs said that most of the women who would have enrolled with the company were poor, did not have physicians and were without adequate prenatal care (Chicago Sun-Times, 10/5).

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