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Who Stands Against Reform?
In the 1990s, Rick Scott was a prominent voice against President Clinton’s attempt to reform the American health care system. Today, Rick Scott is a prominent voice against President Obama’s attempt to reform the American health care system.
What did he do in the meantime? Well, at the hospital chain he founded and ran during his opposition to Clinton,
In the mid-1990s, aided by a former accountant who became a whistle-blower, the feds opened an investigation into suspicions that Columbia/HCA hospitals were routinely defrauding the government by inflating the expenses of procedures billed to Medicare, and paying illegal kickbacks to doctors who steered patients to Columbia/HCA hospitals. In July 1997, a year after Time’s coronation, federal agents raided Columbia/HCA hospitals in more than half a dozen states, and carted away reams of paperwork. Some hospitals were discovered to have two sets of books, one reflecting the true costs for procedures and another with inflated expenses charged to Medicare. Four executives were indicted; two were found guilty and sent to prison. Rather than continue to fight the government, company executives decided to have Columbia/HCA plead guilty to 14 felonies. The hospital giant ended up paying $1.7 billion in fines and settlements.
Scott went unindicted but lost his job there. Now, he owns a chain of urgent-care clinics. He profits more, in other words, the worse our health care system is. Because under most circumstances, you don’t go to an urgent-care clinic if you have good health care. If you have good health care, you don’t have to go to a clinic with extremely limited diagnostic equipment (some have x-rays, some don’t) and a McDonald’s approach to patient care. You go to those clinics because you don’t have a primary care doctor or because you’re trying to avoid the expense of the emergency room. And they don’t replace either—you don’t get consistent care or the ability to respond quickly to serious problems.
He’s the guy who wants to scare you about what happens in other countries’ health care systems (you know, the ones that cover everyone). This is the model he wants for the US. Not coincidentally, it’s the one he profits from.
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