Florida Gov. Rick Scott Wants A Favor—From Obama 9JAN13

REPIGLICAN gov rick scott r FL has made it clear he is opposed to Obamacare and has decided to opt out of the expansion of Medicaid. That hasn't stopped him from going to Washington, hat in hand, asking for a waiver from HHS Sec Sebelius to let him privatize Medicaid in Florida. Not only would his plans remove hundreds of thousands of Floridians from Medicaid by increasing the cost, it would increase the profit margins of the health care privateers by denying coverage and increasing charges to Medicaid patients. He also wants to increase co-pays and monthly premiums to Medicaid patients. Keep in mind this grand plan comes from the former ceo of columbia/hca, the company that stole millions of dollars from the federal govt in the biggest health care fraud case tried in the U.S. This from Mother Jones....

—By Stephanie Mencimer

Richard Graulich/The Palm Beach Post/ZUMAPress

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) was in Washington, DC on Monday to make a deal. Florida, along with a handful of other Republican-run states, is still trying to wage war against Obamacare by refusing to take the generous expansion of Medicaid provided for in the new law. The expansion would provide government insurance to around a million poor and lower-middle-class Floridians, and the federal government has promised to foot almost all of the bill.
Last June, after the Supreme Court decision making the Medicaid expansion optional for the states, Scott said he won't take the money. But when Florida hospitals realized Scott's decision could cost them about $650 million a year in other federal payments, they started lobbying furiously to get him to change his mind. So now, after two years suing, demonizing and otherwise attacking President Barack Obama and the Democrats' health care bill, Scott wants to negotiate. He came to Washington saying that he'd like to "work with the administration to reduce the cost of health care." But that doesn't mean he's changed his mind.
Instead, what Scott wants from Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's secretary of health and human services, is something that might actually make Florida’s dismal insurance situation—nearly 4 million Floridians are uninsured—even worse. Scott wants the Sebelius to give him official permission, called a waiver, to hand over the entire existing Medicaid program to private managed care companies. Don't count on that happening.
Here's why. Florida already has a small pilot project approved by George W. Bush's administration that shunts Medicaid participants into HMO-type organizations. Scott has hailed this as a genius innovation that keeps costs down. But a close look at the program reveals no such miracles. A study by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute concluded that there was no evidence the pilot project was saving money—and even if it was, any savings could have been from denying people needed care. (Anecdotal reports suggested that was the case.)
The Georgetown group also found that it would be all but impossible to make Medicaid more efficient, especially compared with private insurance. Between 2007 and 2012, private sector family insurance premiums rose more than 31 percent, but Florida's per-person Medicaid costs actually fell by five percent. And the idea that Rick Scott is giving the federal government tips on making health care more efficient is interesting given that when he ran his own health care company, Columbia/HCA, it was systematically bilking the federal government of millions of dollars in what turned out to be the biggest health care fraud case the US has ever prosecuted.
So maybe it's not surprising that the Obama administration has so far refused to allow Scott to expand the Medicaid pilot project, much less add another million people to it. And that's not all Scott wants: He's also asked Sebelius to allow Florida to charge all Medicaid patients unprecedented co-pays, such as $100 for emergency room visits not deemed an emergency, plus $10 monthly premiums. The Georgetown Health Policy Institute concluded that such a change would prompt about 800,000 poor parents and children to leave the program, an outcome that flies in the face of the administration's goal of extending Medicaid in the first place. After Monday's meeting with Sebelius, Scott said he was optimistic that he'd get what he wanted, or at least another meeting. Given his track record, he probably shouldn't hold his breath.

Stephanie Mencimer

Reporter

Stephanie Mencimer is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. For more of her stories, click here. You can also follow her on Twitter. RSS | Twitter

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http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/01/florida-gov-rick-scott-wants-favor-obama 

Says Mitt Romney "was director of a company that stole millions from Medicare." 31OKT12

JUST a reminder of the kind of leadership the repiglican / tea-bagger romney-ryan cabal would have brought to the nation. From PolitiFact.....

Says Mitt Romney "was director of a company that stole millions from Medicare."

Priorities USA Action on Wednesday, October 31st, 2012 in a campaign ad

Mitt Romney and Rick Scott both have Medicare fraud in their background, super PAC ad claims

Share this story:

The super PAC Priorities USA Action ran this ad in Florida during the final week of the campaign.

The super PAC supporting President Barack Obama made a final pitch to Florida voters before Election Day: a TV ad comparing Republican nominee Mitt Romney and Gov. Rick Scott.

Showing a picture of the two men locked in a handshake, the ad urges viewers to "connect the dots."

"Scott ran a company that paid a record fine for committing Medicare fraud, then as governor Scott cut millions from health care," a narrator says. "Romney was director of a company that stole millions from Medicare. Now Romney’s plan would end Medicare as we know it.

"We’ve seen this picture before. Just connect the dots: If Mitt Romney wins, the middle class loses."

PolitiFact has investigated claims against both Scott and Romney about Medicare fraud during their business careers. Here’s a look at what we found.

‘Scott ran a company that paid a record fine for committing Medicare fraud’

In the spring of 1987, Scott purchased two Texas hospitals to start a company first known as Columbia. He quickly grew the company by purchasing more hospitals to create a large and profitable network.

In 1994, Columbia purchased Tennessee-headquartered HCA and its 100 hospitals, and merged the companies. Columbia/HCA grew to more than 340 hospitals, 135 surgery centers and 550 home health locations, employing more than 285,000 people.

Scott resigned as chief executive officer in 1997, the year that federal agents went public with an investigation into the company, first seizing records from four El Paso-area hospitals and then expanding across the country.

In time, it became apparent that the investigation focused on whether Columbia/HCA bilked Medicare and Medicaid for tests that were not necessary or ordered by physicians, and for attaching false diagnosis codes to patient records to increase reimbursement to the hospitals.

Scott resigned as CEO in July, less than four months after the inquiry became public. Company executives said that if Scott had remained CEO, the entire chain could have been in jeopardy. At issue, Scott said, was that he wanted to fight the federal government accusations. The corporate board of the publicly traded company wanted to settle.

And settle Columbia/HCA did.

In December 2000, the U.S. Justice Department announced what it called the largest government fraud settlement in U.S. history when Columbia/HCA agreed to pay $840 million in criminal fines and civil damages and penalties. Among the revelations from the 2000 settlement, which all apply to when Scott was CEO, were that Columbia overbilled Medicare for unnecessary tests and false diagnosis codes.

The government settled a second series of similar claims with Columbia/HCA in 2002 for an additional $881 million. The total fine: $1.7 billion.

As part of the 2000 settlement, Columbia/HCA agreed to plead guilty to at least 14 corporate felonies. A corporate felony comes with financial penalties but not jail time, since a corporation can’t be sent to prison. Scott himself was never indicted.

‘Romney was director of a company that stole millions from Medicare’

Romney’s record at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he founded, came up frequently during the Republican primary. This claim refers to Bain’s history with a company charged with Medicare fraud in the 1990s.
  
The Boston media investigated the facts of the case when Romney ran for governor in 2002. It’s also addressed in The Real Romney, a biography by reporters with the Boston Globe.
  
The story begins in 1989, when Romney was the head of Bain Capital, which specialized in buying troubled companies, turning them around, and then selling them for a profit. That year, Bain invested in Damon Corp., a medical testing company based in Needham, Mass.
  
Bain took the company public in 1991, and Romney served on the company’s board of directors. In 1993, Bain orchestrated a sale of the company to Corning Inc., getting a handsome return on its investment and earning Romney himself $473,000, according to The Real Romney. After the sale, Corning closed the main facility in Needham, laying off 115 people.
  
In October 1996, federal prosecutors announced that Damon was agreeing to pay $119 million in both civil and criminal fines after pleading guilty to defrauding Medicare. The company was providing doctors with forms that didn’t make clear what tests included, so doctors were checking off additional tests that weren’t necessary, according to the Globe’s summary of the government’s case.
  
The overbilling went from 1988 through 1993, prosecutors said. "This is a case, pure and simple, of corporate greed run amok," U.S. Attorney Donald Stern said when the settlement was announced.

Romney was never implicated in the case. He claimed that he helped uncover the fraud, but Globe reporting put that claim into question. The Globe reported that court records showed fraudulent activity occurred under Bain’s watch, and that prosecutors gave the credit to Corning for stopping the fraud.
The Romney campaign, though, pointed us to Globe stories noting that Bain officials began investigating the billing practices when a competitor lab pleaded guilty to the same type of fraud. The campaign also emphasized that Bain was never a majority owner in Damon -- its ownership share peaked at 8 percent and was just 2.8 percent went the company sold to Corning.

Are Romney and Scott’s cases similar?

By telling viewers to "connect the dots" between Romney and Scott, the Priorities ad implies that the Medicare fraud cases in their pasts are parallel. But in some important ways, the cases are different.

Scott was the top boss at Columbia/HCA during the years prosecutors found fraudulent activity, and his role as the face of the company is undisputed.

Romney’s position at Damon Corp. is a different story. As a member of the board of directors, Romney had a part in overseeing the company’s general direction. That’s not like being the CEO, who directs day-to-day activities.

The ad muddies that fact -- and it’s misleading to say Romney served as "director" of Damon Corp., not "a director."

Also, Columbia/HCA faced much larger fines and penalties than Damon did -- $1.7 billion versus $119 million.

Our ruling

The Priorities ad says Romney "was director of a company that stole millions from Medicare," comparing him with Scott.

Scott’s hospital company, Columbia/HCA, pleaded guilty to criminal charges and paid a total of $1.7 billion in fines related to Medicare fraud. Even though Scott had resigned by the time the case settled, prosecutors said the widespread fraud occurred while he was at the helm.

But the fraud case at Damon Corp. doesn’t point straight to Romney. His firm bought the company that was later found guilty of fraud, but Romney was not running the show while crimes were being committed.

The statement is accurate but needs additional information. That fits our definition of Mostly True.

About this statement:

Published: Friday, November 2nd, 2012 at 5:26 p.m.
Subjects: Medicare
Sources:
Priorities USA Action, "Connect the Dots," Oct. 31, 2012

PolitiFact Florida, "Was Mitt Romney the director of a company charged with Medicare fraud? AFSCME ad says so," Jan. 23, 2012
PolitiFact Georgia, "Was Super PAC right on Romney claim?" Feb. 21, 2012
PolitiFact Florida, "With Rick Scott leading in polls, opponents pull out 'fraud' line," June 10, 2010
AFSCME, "Greed" ad, Jan. 19, 2012
  
The Real Romney, by Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, 2011
  
United States District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston), USA v. Damon Clinical Labs, Oct. 9, 1996
  
Boston Globe, Reaping profit in study, sweat, June 26, 2007
  
Boston Globe, Romney-aided deal closed Damon plant, Oct. 9, 1994
  
Boston Globe, Needham lab fined $ 119m for fraud, Oct. 10, 1996
  
Boston Globe, Romney profited on firm later tied to fraud, Oct. 10, 2002

St. Petersburg Times, Rivals pounce on Quinnipiac poll results, June 10, 2010

Alex Sink campaign, Rick Scott can't talk about accountability, May 18, 2010

Alex Sink campaign, e-mail interview with Kyra Jennings, May 18, 2010

Bill McCollum campaign, A Fraud Florida Can't Afford, May 18, 2010

Rick Scott campaign, FAQs, accessed May 19, 2010

Miami Herald, Columbia/HCA downplays probe at annual meeting, Scott defends company's record, May 16, 1997, accessed via Nexis

Modern Healthcare, Federal agents strike at Columbia's Roots, March 24, 1997, accessed via Nexis

Modern Healthcare, Columbia's storm builds: Company honchos try to calm workers as troubles swirl, April 07, 1997, accessed via Nexis

Modern Healthcare, Columbia probe widens: Federal raid in 7 states targets lab, home-care records, July 21, 1997, accessed via Nexis

USA TODAY, Columbia's new caretaker Physician heal thy firm: Tall task ahead of CEO, July 28, 1997, accessed via Nexis

St. Petersburg Times, Top Columbia / HCA officials quit, July 26, 1997, accessed via Nexis

New York Times, HCA Is Said To Reach Deal On Settlement Of Fraud Case, Dec. 18, 2002, accessed via Nexis

U.S. Justice Department, HCA to pay $840 million in criminal fines and civil damages, Dec. 14, 2000

U.S. Justice Department, Press statement RE: HCA, Dec. 18, 2002
The Tennessean, Investors yawn over settlement, Dec. 15, 2000, accessed via Nexis

Interview with HCA attorney Walter P. Loughlin, May 20, 2010

Rick Scott campaign, interview with Jennifer Baker, May 20, 2010

Fortune, What is Rick Scott trying to heal, April 27, 2009, accessed via Nexis

ABC news, World News Tonight transcript, Aug. 18, 1997, accessed via Nexis

Bill McCollum campaign, interview with Kristy Campbell, May 21, 2010

St. Petersburg Times, Rick Scott's coffers and scoffers, May 7, 2010

PolitiFact Georgia, "Was Super PAC right on Romney claim?" Jan. 27, 2012
Boston Globe, "Romney-Aided Deal Closed Damon Plant," Oct. 9, 1994, via Nexis
Boston Globe, "Romney Profited On Firm Later Tied To Fraud," Oct. 10, 2002
Email interview with Matt McDonald, Romney campaign, Nov. 2, 2012
Email interview with Brennan Bilberry, Priorities USA Action, Nov. 2, 2012
Written by: Molly Moorhead
Researched by: Angie Drobnic Holan, Aaron Sharockman
Edited by: Angie Drobnic Holanhttp://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/nov/02/priorities-usa-action/mitt-romney-and-rick-scott-both-have-medicare-frau/

Florida Welcomes Rick Scott As Their New Fraudster King 4JAN11

THE most rewarding part of this story is how the campaign workers, those people so stupid, ignorant and no doubt as greedy and self centered as the criminal they helped elect as governor, got shafted by being paid with GIFT CARDS!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! BOHICA!!!!!!! How's that tea-bagger thingy working out for you former scott campaign workers! I love it! And I bet they will be looking for the government to take some sort of action for them to get their pay!!!!! Stupid, ignorant fools! Check out the other "benefits" Floridians can expect from gov scott...
As a raft of newly-elected governors take office across the country, the one I'm most excited about is Florida's Rick Scott, who's getting sworn in at this very moment. Scott rode the Tea Party wave past the Republican establishment pick, Bill McCollum, and went on to post a tight victory over Democratic nominee Alex Sink. Of course, prior to his electoral success, Scott was best known as a record-setting fraudster whose bilking of Medicare reached cartoon-villain proportions: under his stewardship Columbia/Hospital Corporation of America pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and was forced to pay a $2 billion fraud settlement, the largest in the history of the United States.
Now, he'll be taking over for Charlie Crist, running a state best known for passels of shambling old people, swamps riven with non-native species of python, and the statewide inability to pass a law banning sex with animals, including, perhaps, the aforementioned pythons. And if there ever was a man conditioned to rule over what Matt Taibbi refers to as "Griftopia," it's Scott, whose overall shadiness is well-established in advance of his taking an oath of office.
Campaign Workers Shafted:
It only took a week for Scott to show his shady side, after campaign workers complained that they were paid for their services in gift cards, rather than the hard coin of the realm:

Mark Don Givens told Florida's WTSP News that he was expecting a paycheck after he made phone calls and knocked on doors for the Scott campaign, which made jobs a top issue in the election. Givens said he and other workers were upset after they were told by the campaign that they could not offer them a paycheck and given American Express gift cards instead. "This would violate both tax laws and labor laws," Melanie Sloan, the Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) told TPMmuckraker in an email. "It looks like the newly elected AG will be investigating the newly elected governor.

Lavish Inauguration Plans:
Across the country, most governors seem pretty clued in to the fact that Americans are struggling in this economy, and are responding by dialing down the inaugural festivities. As incoming Michigan Governor Rick Snyder put it, "It's a tough environment...You want to set the right kind of tone." Not so with Scott, who plans a gaudy self-celebration:

Before he's even taken office, however, some Floridians are criticizing Scott for planning an extravagant inauguration ceremony in the midst of the state's economic turmoil. The Governor's Inaugural Ball will take place in Tallahassee on Jan. 4, and any Floridian that can scrape together $95 can attend. So far, Scott -- who won by the narrowest margin in 134 years in a Florida gubernatorial race -- has raised $2 million for the ball, primarily from large corporations that conduct business in the state.

Story continues below

[...]
When challenged on the expensive ceremony, Scott responded that "he's not sure what the right number is" to spend on an inauguration, and that "it's important to have a celebration." This is a view that was not held by his predecessor, Gov. Charlie Crist, who canceled his inaugural ceremony in 2006 after similar criticisms over the cost and scale of the party. "I made a mistake, and, yes, it was a doozy," Crist said at the time. "Upon reflection, it doesn't feel right to me when there are people having trouble paying their insurance bills and making ends meet."

Scott's inaugural festivities include a trip to Disney World, the go-to location for U.S. governors seeking refuge from the demands of their constituents.
School Overhaul Plan To Benefit Grifters
Because so many people move to Florida in order to die, and then fail to do so, there is a broad swath of the voting population that just doesn't care about how anyone in the state gets educated. And so Rick Scott's plan to turn Florida's public schools into a giant corporate social experiment isn't going to encounter much resistance. What it will encounter is graft by the ton, since the proposal, as Mother Jones' Stephanie Mencimer points out, is "a fraudster's dream."

As soon as the state starts handing families $5500 a year, it's virtually assured that enterprising thieves will devise various schemes to help them part with those funds, including by starting "independent" for-profit virtual schools, charter schools, and other predatory "educational" institutions. While the idea of privatizing the education system may seem like a big money saver, and no one really loves school bureaucracies, putting that much taxpayer money out there without adequate oversight (i.e. bureaucracy) is a formula for disaster. It's not just a hypothetical harm, as charter schools in many states have demonstrated. Charter schools get paid by the number of kids they enroll, and they are free from much of the bureaucracy Republicans like to bash so much. All that money mixed with all that freedom hasn't produced much in the way of an education boost: Charter schools perform no better and often much worse than traditional ones. But they have produced a bumper crop of fraudsters.
In recent years, the US Department of Education's Office of the Inspector General has been raising red flags about charter school fraud and embezzlement, a problem that is increasing. In March, the OIG wrote that it had opened more than 40 charter school criminal investigations that resulted in the convictions of 15 charter school officials, with 24 cases still pending. Most of the cases involved charter school operators and employees who falsely increased enrollment figures and used the extra money to bankroll lavish lifestyles. They often engaged in testing and grade-fixing antics to ensure the money kept rolling in. At the time the report was released, prosecutors had recovered more than $4 million stolen by charter school employees and operators since 2005.

Welcome to the Columbia/HCA-ization of Florida schools, everyone! That former D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee wants to help out with this should, for all intents and purposes, halt plans for her canonization.
The New Front In The War On The Unemployed
Currently, the nation's unemployed face a steep hurdle on the road to getting their lives on a stable footing -- there exists only one job opening for every five job seekers. That basic fact should be seen as the larger problem in this massive unemployment crisis, but the economic advisers who will be guiding Rick Scott are instead telling him that the problem is that people are shiftless and lazy. Citing Alan Krueger, a Princeton University professor of economics, Scott's economic advisers have been telling him that the unemployed spend only a scant amount of time looking for work and are otherwise living high on the hog of unemployment benefits. They recommend that Scott "tighten job-search requirements for people getting benefits, cut off assistance for those who don't comply and assign community work for those who don't get a job in 12 weeks."
Naturally, as ThinkProgress has noted, their advice is predicated on massive distortions of Krueger's work.

Krueger, who is a well-regarded professor of economics at Princeton University, took issue with the characterization of his research. First, he said, the research -- which was conducted during the stronger economic period of the mid 2000s -- actually shows that the average amount of time spent job-searching is double what the report says -- more than 40 minutes a day, not 20.
Secondly, "the unemployed in the U.S. devote more time searching for a job than unemployed workers in other countries," Krueger wrote in an e-mail, "yet they [Scott's team] make it seem that the unemployed put little effort into finding a job."
And lastly, he added that the real problem faced by the unemployed today "is lack of jobs, not overly generous benefits." The team, he said, "misspelled my name and misused my study!"

Indeed, it only takes a few minutes access to Google to sufficiently prove that unemployed Americans are actually busting their humps, trying to find scarce work.
Reduced Priority On Drug Enforcement
Maybe I spent too much time watching "Miami Vice" growing up, maybe it's the fact that I witnessed a drug arrest with swarming, rifle-carrying cops at a Burger King drive-through within 20 minutes of arriving in Florida for the first time, but one thing I associate with the Sunshine State -- besides Disney and the elderly -- is drugs, lots and lots of drugs. But maybe there's nothing to Rick Scott's plan to eliminate the Jeb Bush-created Office of Drug Control.
Or maybe there is:

"We've got a heck of a problem in this state with drugs. And it's not going to be over any time soon," Grant said. "What you're saying by getting rid of this office is that's not a priority. And that's a mistake. Because it is a priority. We all have been connected to somebody with a substance abuse problem, and we all know how devastating it can be for a family and for our economy." Fontaine said a recent study showed that substance abuse has a $43 billion negative impact on the state economy due to loss of job productivity, and costs associated with hospital and emergency room visits and incarceration. Fontaine said about 65 percent of Florida inmates have substance abuse problems. Meanwhile, a 2009 Florida Department of Law Enforcement study concluded seven people in Florida die every day due to prescription drug abuse.

So basically, things in Florida are headed in the precise direction I imagined they would under the direction of America's Top Fraudster Scumbag: toward a future in which everyone is poorly educated, high on drugs, underemployed and paid in Wal-Mart gift cards, as Scott lavishes himself with attention and perks. Good luck with that, Florida.
UPDATE: Rick Scott, magnet for hecklers, was apparently interrupted by one today, as he delivered his inaugural speech:

A heckler briefly interrupted newly sworn in Gov. Rick Scott's speech. "You are a criminal, you are not a Christian," the heckler said at the beginning of the speech.
The governor did not respond, just paused, then kept talking. Capitol police quickly quieted him. There also were a couple of protesters in the crowd.

The heckler raises an interesting point! In additional fun Rick Scott news, Tampa Bay Online provides us with a pair of word-clouds, for our amusement. The first is derived from Scott's speech:

The second is titled, "One Word Feelings About Scott Taking Office":

Hopefully, Rick Scott's future grifter charter schools will at least help Floridians learn to spell "Voldemort."