3 oligarchs-turned-governors who are laying ruin to their states
3 oligarchs-turned-governors who are laying ruin to their states
Rick Scott, Matt Bevin and Bruce Rauner have gutted social services for the poor. The results speak for themselves
Alex Henderson, AlterNet
If any state was justified in describing itself as a major Obamacare success story, it was Kentucky; that is, before Republican Matt Bevin was sworn in as governor. Kentucky, under Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear, was the home of Kynect, a state-operated Obamacare exchange that resulted in 500,000 Kentucky residents gaining health insurance, including many poor people with preexisting conditions. But Bevin, a rabid Tea Party ideologue who defeated Democrat Jack Conway in Kentucky’s gubernatorial race in 2015, campaigned on dismantling Kynect, and he has been making good on his promise, causing considerable misery to people like Louisville mother Emily Pickett (who, on February 29, found out Medicaid coverage for her two small children had been cut off).
Bevin, according to Cara Stewart, a legal aid attorney with the Kentucky Equal Justice Center, has brought about a “dramatic reduction in accessibility” to health care in his state. But the suffering of America’s poor is not a concern to Bevin any more than it is to Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner or Florida Gov. Rick Scott.
Bevin, Rauner and Scott epitomize a toxic breed of far-right Republican ideologues: greedy, enamored of corporate power and only too happy to attack the poor at every turn while their considerable fortunes continue to grow. Scott, Rauner and Bevin were all worth millions when they took office. But being ultra-rich was not enough for them; like true oligarchs, they craved more money and more power. And while Rauner and Scott’s states have suffered, their own bottom lines certainly haven’t.
1. Florida Gov. Rick Scott
Scott’s net worth, according to the Tampa Bay Times, went from $84 million in 2012 to $132 million in 2013 to $147 million by the summer of 2015. Despite being reelected by a narrow margin in 2014, Scott remains unpopular in Florida; in most polls, his approval ratings have generally been in the low 40s.
Scott, a persistent opponent of health care reform, has a long history of profiting from the U.S.’ troubled health care system. Back in 1987, Scott co-founded the Columbia Hospital Corporation, which merged with the Hospital Corporation of America a few years later. In 1997, during a major fraud investigation and scandal over the company’s billing practices, Columbia/HCA’s board of directors forced Scott to resign from his position as chairman and CEO. He walked away with a settlement of almost $10 million and over $300 million worth of stock.
While Scott was making a fortune at Columbia/HCA, countless Americans were suffering medical bankruptcies. But the fact that medical bankruptcies have been so common in the U.S. hasn’t stopped him from opposing any type of health insurance reform, even the Affordable Care Act of 2010, aka Obamacare. The elements of the ACA were greatly influenced by the Heritage Foundation, President Richard Nixon, Sen. Bob Dole, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and other Republicans who, in the past, advocated universal health care via the private sector. In fact, one of the people President Barack Obama consulted in 2009 was Stuart Altman, who had advised Nixon on health care reform in the early 1970s. What Nixon had in mind was similar to the ACA, only with more generous provisions. But you won’t hear that from Scott, who continues to claim that Obamacare is socialized medicine.
In 2009, the year before Scott was elected governor, he feared health insurance reform would endanger corporate profits and formed the anti-Obamacare pressure group Conservatives for Patients Rights. When two British women, Katie Brickell and Kate Spall, were featured in a CPR ad attacking the U.K.’s National Health Service, the women were outraged and asserted that the ad misrepresented their views and took their statements out of context. Linking the ACA to the U.K.’s public single-payer health care system was totally disingenuous on Scott’s part because a single-payer system was never even on the table for Democrats in Congress in 2009 or 2010.
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http://www.salon.com/2016/05/11/4_oligarchs_turned_governors_who_are_laying_ruin_to_their_states_partner/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
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who already laid ruin to his. 
BASTARDS. 
the MSM, and uninformed friends and family, and just don't know who these candidates really are? 
I don't know...
