Secret Court Proceedings

Deportation Research Clinic
Buffet Institute for Global Affairs
Northwestern University

People of the State of Illinois v. NextLevel Health (2020-CH-04431)

In the summer of 2021, Professor Jacqueline Stevens wanted to know why the Illinois Attorney General had filed a lawsuit against the health insurance firm NextLevel Health Partners, Inc., and why it was not listed on the Cook County Circuit Court website. Weeks later, a court official revealed to Stevens the existence of an obscure and unconstitutional law obligating secret insolvency proceedings for insurance companies: ILCS 5/188.1 (b) (4,5). Over half the states have similar rules. The materials below were received pursuant to a FOIA request and First Amendment pro se intervenor petition and motion; this is a case of first impression.

Over the objections of NextLevel, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Judge Pamela McLean Meyerson in late November, 2021 ordered the release of records. The documents below reveal NextLevel had been declared insolvent and that its largest creditor was the State of Illinois. Included is a "Membership Transfer Agreement" turning over to Fortune 500 Centene Corporation subsidiary NextLevel's membership. NextLevel had obtained the contract from the Illinois Department of Health and Family Services through a controversial set-aside for a minority-owned business. Centene has officers who also were major investors in NextLevel. Centene is not minority-owned.

Details on NextLevel's formation and dissolution, and the First Amendment violations of secret insurance firm conservancy proceedings, appear in Stevens' amended intervenor motion.

Stevens pursued these records after learning that a former NextLevel official Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL) pushed for legislation to fund a massive biometric database for Customs and Border Protection. NextLevel's CEO was Illinois political insider Cheryl Whitaker, a close friend of the Obamas. In 2014 Whitaker ran the Congressional campaign for Robin Kelly (D-IL). Underwood's first job out of the Obama administration was working for NextLevel. Underwood ran in 2017 as a nurse and a progressive. Underwood's campaign images showed her in scrubs and wearing a stethoscope, appearing to aid a patient. Underwood also claimed in her Federal Election Commission filings that her occupation for NextLevel was "registered nurse." The truth is that Underwood worked on Medicaid insurance in the Obama administration and was meeting with insurance firm executives who would be overseeing Medicaid payments to hospitals, a pass-through called "managed care organizations" that suck out money from actual health care and expand the finance industry; the folks making fortunes from this scam throw a few million here and there to lobbyists and campaign contributions so that Congress regressively obligates taxpayer funds for finance firms and not health care.

When NextLevel transitioned to its $1.2 billion in managed care contracts with Illinois in 2017, Underwood was NextLevel's senior director for strategic and regulatory affairs. Underwood has a degree in public health nursing from Johns Hopkins but never has been paid to care for patients. Underwood also understated her NextLevel salary in her 2018 financial disclosure report submitted to the House. Underwood did not explain the discrepancy when reporter John Washington and Stevens made inquiries in 2019, but she did file a new report a week after their article was published in The Intercept. Stevens re-engaged her research on NextLevel after hearing Rep. Underwood, then on the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, reintroduce her proposal for the database in July, 2021.

On December 6, 2021, Judge Meyerson granted Stevens' petition to file an intervenor motion and also lifted the stay on ending the sequestration of most documents filed in litigation. On October 5, 2022, Judge Meyerson denied Stevens' motions, including to Declare Public Records in the Public Record after DLA Piper attorneys failed to execute an order of November 29, 2021 and left in the public record until July 15, 2022 all of the documents ordered sealed. Stevens will appeal.