No to Rick Scott

Just a quick opinion:

Rick Scott past governor of Florida and CEO of Columbia/HCA should not oversee developing a government health care plan.

Scott might seem that he would be a good choice to develop a national healthcare for the United States with his experience operating a large company that owns plenty of hospitals.  With admission, of course, that a business man would likely be more concerned about the success of companies that manage healthcare than with patient that use the system.  But, still, he knows his stuff, right?

Well, that is until the stuff he needs to know is going on in his own company.

Scott was the CEO of Columbia/HCA when the feds discovered that millions, perhaps billions were being falsely billed to the government for service that were not needed or that were never performed.  The feds started the investigation at the first two hospitals that Scott owned.  If there was any place that Scott should have known what was going on under his supervision, it should have been when the company was small.  But that is where the fraud started and spread throughout the company as it grows to one of the larger hospital companies in America.

Scott was the CEO the entire time.

Six months after the investigation started, Scott resigned.  The board of the company cut a deal, a deal of $1.7 billion – not million, billion.  To fully disclose, Scott said he wanted to fight it.  He said that during the Florida race for governor.

Nice try to cover up the past.

So, what is the crime here.  Scott’s company, Columbia/HCA admitted guilt to defrauding the government while Scott was running the place.  But Scott said he didn’t know about it.  That might let me forgive him for one thing – might is an important word here, because I wouldn’t, but I will say might – the not knowing part.    

But the not knowing part is really the core issue.

What, you say? 

If you don’t know what is going on in a small company like just two hospitals, how can you know what is going on in a large organization like a government healthcare plan?

In my opinion, as a past CEO in a company that defrauded the government (one that the company cut a deal on) Rick Scott should not be part of a government plan to develop a healthcare plan.

Source: https://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2014/mar/03/florida-democratic-party/rick-scott-rick-scott-oversaw-largest-medicare-fra/