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Health Care Reform Opponent Outed: Scott a Hospital CEO With Shady Past
The former CEO of Columbia/Hospital Corporation of America who was forced to resign in 1997 amid fraud charges, as well as the group that launched the infamous “Swift Boat” attack on the 2004 presidential bid of Sen. John Kerry, are now trying to sink health care reform.
But Health Care for America NOW! (HCAN), which supports health care reform, last week launched a television ad (left) detailing the “dubious past in the health care industry” of anti-health care reform front man Rick Scott.
According HCAN, after Scott was forced to resign from the health care giant in the wake of fraud charges, Columbia/HCA agreed to pay $1.7 billion in fines and penalties—the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history.
Says HCAN in a statement:
The hospital corporation pleaded guilty to a litany of criminal and civil charges including lying to the government about how sick patients were so they could collect larger fees.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported this morning that Scott is using $5 million of his own money, plus another $15 million from donors he refuses to name, to finance the “swift boating” of President Obama’s health care reform initiatives. The Post reports that PRC Public Relations, the group that slimed Kerry’s Vietnam War record, is coordinating the campaign.
Earlier this year, Scott, who is a major donor to the Republican Party, according the Washington newspaper Politico, founded the group Conservatives for Patients’ Rights. That group is airing the ads on national cable outlets like CNN and Fox attacking Obama’s health care proposals with false claims and recycled scare tactics.
Richard Kirsch, HCAN’s national campaign manager, says that although major media outlets have covered Scott’s anti-reform campaign, they have failed to explore his past.
Rick Scott made millions with a company that defrauded the government and the American people for profit. If he’s going to grant interviews and plaster himself all over the airwaves as the face of anti-reform, we believe everyone has the right to know exactly where he’s coming from.
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8 Comments
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That’s good that HCAN is outing Rick Scott. But a little too late as I believe wveryone knows what a scumbag he is. Now let’s get to HCAN. Who funds them? Interesting that they do not favor single payer health care. So it’s business as usual, let the health care industry write the legislation, and we the workers get screwed some more with higher premiums. Today the HC industry promised (with fingers crossed behind their backs) to cut costs, to insure everyone. But for how long?? Until legislation is passed and they then know single payer is a dead cause. All these years they have dictated who, how, and what when it comes to insuring people. Profits over patient care is their motto, and I think HCAN is a part of the scam. We want single payer health care BACK on the table.
We need to remind the guy at the WH, the one we voted for to listen to the will of the people and to demand an apology from Sen. Baucus for tossing single payer activists out of the recent hearing and laughing about it and saying “We need more police”.
Email: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Write: The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Call: 202-456-1111
Fax: 202-456-2461
Although this guy was outed, I fear the anti-real reform folks still in full swing.
Today in the senate, single-payer health care reform folks were again arrested. Is single-payer off the table or what?
That is something labor needs to address.
We want single payer health care. We don’t want the insurance industry or psychoactive pus balls like Rick Scott writing Health Care legislation. If we need to take to the streets, like putting 10 million working people in DC to make our point, that’s what we should be doing. Allowing these parasitical drones to outfox us is an insult to every working person in this country. Those who can stand up, should stand up now; those who are ion wheel chairs ought to roll out into the streets! Let’s fight these greedy bastards now, before the law is passed. Let’s not wait another day! Let’s get the message out now!
The corporate owned Senate Finance Committee has made it perfectly clear that REAL healthcare reform (single payer) will not be discussed. They have resorted to arrests to make their point. So be it.
Those of us in the healthcare reform movement must look back at the tactics of the labor movement and civil rights movement. Progress did not come about from the courts or the politicians! We acquired the rights we have through organized struggle in the streets! Sit down strikes, general strikes, mass protests, civil disobedience, etc.
WE MUST TAKE OUR CAUSE TO THE STREETS! WE MUST SHAME THE U.S. CONGRESS BEFORE THE ENTIRE WORLD!
garyro1: Baucus has said it is off the table. Everyone who wants true health care reform, needs to email, fax and phone the White House until the lines are jammed, email box is full, and demand single payer be put back on the table.
Yesterday Andy Stern from SEIU was there with the HC industry
“leaders” with Obama promising health care cost will decrease, yeah for how long? John Sweeney won’t speak for us supporters of single payer.
May 13 National Day of Action for Single-payer Healthcare in Washington DC, a march and rally. Sweeney is supposed to speak. What is he going to do, tell thousands of union people to forget about single payer? I am curious what he will say.
Email: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Write: The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Call: 202-456-1111
Fax: 202-456-2461
[...] the AFL/CIO Blog Health Care Reform Opponent Outed: Scott a Hospital CEO With Shady Past: The former CEO of Columbia/Hospital Corporation of America who was forced to resign in 1997 amid [...]
LET US HAVE THE SAME MEDICAL CARE SYSTEM LIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD. ELIMINATE THE INSURANCE CORPORATIONS AND ELIMINATE THE PROFIT MOTIVE FOR THE ECO’S OF THESE CORPORATIONS.THE REST OF THE WORLD IS NOT CONTROLLED BY THE INSURANCE AND PHARMACICAL INDUSTRIES. WE DESERVE THE SAME COVERAGE LIKE THE POLITICIANS NOTHING LESS. SUPPORT REPRESENTATIVE JOHN CONYERS SINGLE PAYER BILL HR 676.
Tell Sen Baucus that! He thinks or insists single payer won’t work in America..Well the current system isn’t working either, time to scrap it. But then again if Obama talks to only the health care industry on trying to “reform” this broken system, with Labor leaders nodding their heads in approval, knowing this will hurt workers in the long run, we will get nowhere.