GOP Candidate Insists He Took ‘Responsibility’ For Largest Medicare Fraud In History

Discussion in 'Politics' started by hermit, Aug 27, 2010.

  1. Last night, during an appearance on CNN, Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott defended his stewardship of Columbia/HCA, a large for-profit hospital chain that pled guilty to 14 felonies and paid $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines for defrauding Medicare. Scott explained that he invested his life savings in the business to “built the largest health provider in the world” and stressed that he “took responsibility for what went wrong”:

    SCOTT: And what I tell people is, you know, when you’re in business, anything that goes wrong, you should take responsibility if you’re the CEO. I do. The difference is let’s think about where we are in the state. We have the highest unemployment on record. We have almost 50 percent of our home owns under water on their mortgages. We’re walking into a five-plus billion dollar deficit. Has any politician in the state taken responsibility for putting us in this position? No. What I tell people all the time is I’m a business person. I know, you know, you put up your money, you try to build your companies and you take responsibility for what goes wrong. I do. When I’m governor, I hope nothing goes wrong. If it does, I’ll show up, I’ll take responsibility and I’ll fix it.

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    Scott may certainly be sorry for what happened, but it seems that the only thing he took was “a $9.88 million severance package, along with 10 million shares of stock worth up to $300 million at the time” after he was ousted from the Columbia/HCA board in 1997. In fact, as the Wonk Room explains, during a deposition Scott gave in 2000 about his time as head of Columbia/HCA, “he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 75 times.”

    Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who has called and congratulated Scott on his victory, says he still has questions about Scott's past at Columbia/HCA: "I still have serious questions ... about issues with his character, his integrity, his honestly, things that go back to Columbia/HCA and I have not had the occasion to really actually even get acquainted with him," McCollum said.

    http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/09/30/rick_scott_one
    http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/08/26/scott-responsibility/
    http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nake...still-have-serious-questions-about-scott.html
    http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/08/25/rick-scott-mcdonald/

    http://thinkprogress.org/2010/08/26/scott-responsibility-fraud/
     
  2. This is the face of the farcical Tea Party.
    Bought & paid for by corrupt corporate criminals like Rick Scott, voted for by either the man's friends and characters just like him, or by folks too lazy to do the five minutes of research it would take to realize just what kind of scum he is.
     
  3. Does Rick Scott Know What A Governor Does? He Campaigns On Bush Tax Cuts That He Couldn’t Affect

    Now that disgraced former health care executive Rick Scott has officially won his Republican gubernatorial primary in Florida, he is turning his attention to his general election campaign against the Democratic nominee, Florida CFO Alex Sink. And part of that campaign is evidently leaving no doubt as to where he stands regarding the Bush tax cuts, which are scheduled to expire at the end of the year — Scott very clearly wants them all extended, even for the richest two percent of Americans, per his campaign spokesperson:

    Floridians want an answer: Will Alex Sink stand with Obama and let the Bush tax cuts expire, thereby increasing Floridians’ taxes, or will she stand with taxpayers and demand Obama work to extend the Bush tax cuts?

    Scott has also touted his opposition to the Bush tax cuts on both national and local television. Watch it:

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    Of course, as governor, Scott wouldn’t have any say over whether or not the Bush tax cuts get extended. He could certainly advise Florida’s congressional delegation, but at the end of the day, federal tax policy is not within the purview of the nation’s governors. As The Wonk Room points out, Florida has one of the country’s most regressive state tax systems, and Scott’s economic plan would only make it worse

    http://thinkprogress.org/2010/08/30/rick-scott-bush-tax-cuts/