FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Statement from Mercy Medical Center: It is our responsibility to continue the legal challenge of Aultman business practices and use of charitable funds

Canton, Ohio: Mercy Medical Center has issued the following statement in response to filings made on June 12th by Aultman Health Foundation in Stark County Common Pleas Court:

Mercy Medical Center filed its lawsuit against Aultman Health Foundation last December to challenge Aultman’s inappropriate use of charitable funds and its practice of making secret payments to insurance brokers in order to convert healthcare customers to Aultman insurance plans. We believe the lawsuit serves the greater Canton community’s interests in vigorous and ethical competition, transparency and full disclosure to clients and consumers.

More importantly, Mercy Medical Center takes very seriously the laws that require tax-exempt funds to be used only for charitable purposes. Mercy’s lawsuit challenges Aultman Health Foundation’s use of charitable moneys. In 2007 alone, Aultman Health Foundation provided more than $16 million of charitable moneys to its for-profit McKinley Life Insurance Company, which had a 2007 net underwriting loss in excess of $20 million.

Specifically, Mercy’s lawsuit alleges:

1. Aultman Health Foundation spent millions of dollars in charitable funds to support the losses of its for-profit insurance company;

2. The Aultman Health Foundation secretly paid millions of dollars in charitable funds to a select group of insurance brokers, in return for these brokers converting healthcare consumers to Aultman insurance plans;

3. The Aultman Health Foundation required these brokers to sign secrecy agreements, which prevented the brokers from disclosing these large secret payments to anyone, even their own clients;

4. Aultman Health Foundation did not disclose these secret payments in their public filings to state or federal agencies, nor did it provide information that would enable its group health clients to report the payments in the clients’ filings.

Mercy is proud of the way it conducts its business, is willing to make full disclosure of its practices in this litigation, and challenges Aultman to do the same rather than concealing its business practices.

On June 12th, Aultman filed a series of baseless counterclaims against Mercy. Mercy is well-prepared to continue our legal challenge of Aultman’s business practices and use of charitable funds, and will vigorously defend Aultman’s baseless counterclaims so that justice can be served.