Rick Scott: Health Care Reform Opponent

Rick Scott, a name you might not have heard too commonly, if at all, is a name that everyone should be watchful of during this era of health care reform. He is much more conservative on the issue of health care reform than the Republican Party. He is the master mind behind a 20 million dollar deal trying to squash President Obama’s health care reform. Scott, the would be spokesperson of his own version of health care reform, is arguable the antithesis of positive reform.

Defraud and Rick Scott should never be more than four words apart in any sentence. Scott, while bolstering himself as an advocate of patient’s rights, helped found a for-profit hospital chain that had a habit of defrauding the government for hundreds of millions of dollars. Scott argued that health care reform was happening in the market place, not in the government. Scott was on a mission to put nonprofit hospitals out of business, stating that no health care reform was taking place in these “nontax paying’ hospitals”

The only thing that Scott’s hospitals reformed was their book keeping practices. This chain of for profit hospitals would keep two sets of financial records. An internal copy, which actually documented the hospitals expenses, and an external (government) copy, which inflated the hospital’s costs and expenses. Scott’s hospitals also over exaggerated patient’s illness and gave doctors kickbacks if they worked with this system.

Scott’s plans of future health care reform seem just as misguided as his past. Scott was recently quoted as saying “Congress wants to spend all that cash on a plan nobody wants”. The truth of the matter is that approximately 69% of Americans are actually in favor of a Government Health Care Option, more commonly known as the public option. It appears Scott thinks most Americans are nobodies.

The public option, or as Scott states “a nice way of saying ‘government run’ health care,” would actually be an improvement on premiums to the public, estimated at 23 percent lower price than similar private premiums. Scott’s for profit hospitals have made their money from the private health care field, so the opposition to the public option seem to be purely self involved.

Rick Scott has been very careful to hide his past while voicing opposition to this idea of health care reform. When making an informed decision about your opinion as to the issue health care reform, be sure to research not only the facts, but those who are giving you the facts. Do not be swayed by Scott’s ad campaigns or inflated statistics. Because as we have seen, Rick Scott seems to do a great job of inflating statistics.