As a U.S. Senate candidate in 2018, Rick Scott ran TV ads appearing to take responsibility for his leadership of Columbia/HCA, the hospital chain that collapsed in 1997 under the weight of massive health care fraud.
Now Scott is using it for bragging rights.
The federal shutdown hinges on access to health care. Democrats refuse to pass a funding bill, in part because they want subsidies extended under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Without the subsidies, insurance costs for as many as 24 million Americans will soar.
The former Florida governor says he knows how to fix the impasse.
“I built the largest hospital company in the country,” Scott said on Fox, explaining his credentials for ending the shutdown and claiming he wants to fix Obamacare.
Crashed on his watch
Co-founding a hospital chain that crashed and burned on his watch is not the impressive résumé Scott may think it is. Similarly, sincerity about “saving” Obamacare is undercut by his having self-funded a national campaign that tried to kill the Affordable Care Act even before it was written.
Nor does Scott appear interested in what health care looks like beyond his Senate offices.
He’s asking U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to slap tariffs on imported ingredients used in generic drugs. Ingredients sourced from China and India pose a national security threat, Scott argued, meaning tariffs should be imposed immediately. He did not mention the likely financial fallout to Americans, especially older people who depend on less-costly generics.
If Scott insists on citing his Columbia/HCA experience as a reason to trust his ideas on health care and the government, it’s worth revisiting details of how his business-based “fixes” panned out for patients and taxpayers.
The face of fraud
Here’s what fraud looked like: There were two sets of books. Doctors received kickbacks. Diagnoses were faked to fatten reimbursements. Bills were inflated. Staff was slashed. Hospitals that balked at being bought by the conglomerate were routinely threatened: If they didn’t sell, HCA warned that it would open a competing hospital nearby.
Under Scott’s leadership, the chain billed Medicare $14,523 for employee entertainment including clowns, a disc jockey, golf and a comedy club, according to a 1993 GAO report. Taxpayers got the $53,657 tab for business trips to Italy, Belgium and Australia, along with a $97,631 bill for awards, plaques and employee gifts.
That included $14,912 in Tiffany pitchers handed out to executives. Tickets totaling $11,641 for the ballet, theater and symphonies got rolled into Medicare billings. So did $17,755 for liquor at employee meetings, including a $531 tab for booze on a $3,053 Opryland dinner cruise.
Few of those lavish expenses would be out of line for a multibillion dollar corporation. But the corporation wasn’t billed. Instead, the medical system America’s seniors and disabled citizens depend on was. And the only person looking at that shattered empire and seeing success is the man who oversaw it: Rick Scott.
It took federal agents loading rental vans with documents from Columbia/HCA’s Texas hospitals and offices before the board began negotiations with the Department of Justice, rolled back key Scott policies, forced him to resign and changed the company name to HCA Healthcare, to distance itself from the stench of fraud.
Blowing off the feds
By the time the dust settled, the investigations that Scott had treated with disdain — including ignoring requests for interviews with federal investigators — led to $1.7 billion in fines and penalties, at that time the largest health care fraud in U.S. history.
Columbia/HCA subsidiaries pleaded guilty to 14 felonies.
Incredibly, Scott now insists the Columbia/HCA investigation was all about him; that the Clinton administration was persecuting him for opposing health care reform. If that were true, Scott would have faced criminal charges. He didn’t. No senior executive did.
Either Scott knew his company was billing Medicare for C-Suite Tiffany trinkets or he had no clue. Either one disqualifies him as a credible voice on health care. Not in the midst of the shutdown and not ever — until he acknowledges what it took to build Columbia/HCA’s profits.
The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.
