AUSTIN — D'ashon Morris is permanently brain damaged because Superior HealthPlan cared more about its profits than the foster baby's needs, his adoptive mother contends in a lawsuit she filed last week. 

Linda Badawo's lawyers accuse Superior, owned by Missouri-based Centene Corp., of improperly denying round-the-clock nursing for the boy to save money, even though his doctor and nurses had documented his dangerous habit of pulling out his breathing tube.  One morning in October 2016, when his nurse wasn't on duty, he yanked out his tracheostomy tube, cutting off oxygen to his brain. 

The family's fight with the state's largest private Medicaid provider was chronicled in "Pain & Profit," a report on a yearlong Dallas Morning News investigation that began publishing in June.  That series exposed widespread problems with Medicaid managed care, the system through which Texas pays companies billions of dollars each year to handle the health needs of foster children, very sick kids, and disabled adults. 

D'ashon, now 3, is now in a persistent vegetative state, and Badawo, who adopted the child last year, wants a jury to decide if the company is to blame. 

The lawsuit, filed in state District Court in Travis County, accuses Superior of fraud and gross negligence and seeks more than $1 million in damages. 

Superior spokesman Michael Cation said the company doesn't comment on litigation, but added, "Superior disputes many of the allegations in the complaint."  The company has publicly denied wrongdoing, including during legislative testimony earlier this summer. 

Casey Low, the Austin lawyer representing D'ashon and his mother, has a history with Superior.  He and his firm sued the company, alleging anti-trust violations, after it refused to pay family doctors for performing routine allergy exams, instead requiring patients to see specialists who were in short supply in many parts of Texas.