Scott orders study of abolishing public hospitals

[teach1st]

Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Gov. Rick Scott, a former executive of corporate hospitals, on Wednesday ordered a yearlong study of whether Florida could do away with government-owned hospitals such as the nine in Broward County and financially ailing Jackson Memorial in Miami.

Scott set up a commission to report by Jan. 1 if the state could save money and provide better health care if privately owned and nonprofit hospitals took over caring for the uninsured and poor people, a role that public hospitals mostly shoulder.

The governor wants the panel to delve into controversial issues such as whether government-run hospitals pay friendly doctors inflated contracts to get business, use taxes to compete unfairly with the private sector, and waste money from the hundreds of millions in taxes they collect to subsidize the treatment of those who can't pay.

"It is the intent of this administration to develop a more rational approach to compensating hospitals," Scott said in his order. He also asked for the best methods for converting government hospitals to private ownership.

Read more: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-scott-tax-supported-hospitals-20110323,0,578525.story

[LiberalFighter]

1. Florida is in serious trouble.

[glinda]

24. 1) Fix the voting system 2) Impeach or recall or something asap.

[TheMadMonk]

78. It is fixed. That's the bloody problem. /nt

[glinda]

81. Funny but not funny.

[lark]

54. You sooooooooooo got that right

My (cough, gasp, gag) criminal governor is batship, teabag, crazy. He's already in the process of destroying FL schools, and now wants to privatize the charity hospitals, the same way I bet he will try to privatize all public schools when no teacher will work in this state for long because of the draconian pay changes he just put in place.

I know that hate is corrosive and harms the hater - but I just can't get beyond an absolute and total loathing of every single thing about him. He's just plain vile.

[madaboutharry]

2. Gov. Scott is an asshole.

[juxtaposed]

21. and a shit head too

[GReedDiamond]

42. and, although he dodged any direct criminal liability...

...he ran a criminal organization which, as we all know, was responsible for the largest Medicare fraud scam in history.

Asshole, shithead, and I'd add to that, crooked fucking slimeball.

Shitbag Scott oughta be behind bars, not the Governor of Florida's desk.

[femmocrat]

3. First they came for the teachers....

then for the hospital workers.

[The Backlash Cometh]

38. Yes. They are removing the jobs that hold up our society.

It is going to get very ugly.

[okieinpain]

46. but, but, but, it's that evil president obama that I really blame.

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[neoralme]

50. That's the point. It should be very ugly now! Scott should be afraid

to leave his office.

[The Backlash Cometh]

52. This is Florida.

And some of the people he's displacing are right-wingers. I have no clue what's going to happen next, but, I suspect that anyone who thinks that he's only pissing off the Dems will be sadly mistaken.

[neoralme]

68. Both my brothers live in Safety Harbor. They hate him. They

regret their votes in 2010. They both voted for Obama in 2008 but don't care for him now. One was making over 100,000 a year selling medical supplies. I just mailed his completed taxes for 2010. (I live in California). He didn't even make 10,000. My other brother works for a dental lab making the frames for false teeth. Business is way down; he barely makes it. Neither think things will improve no matter who is elected President next year.

[2Design]

79. read comments on stories about him - they are all crazy and like him

[iamjoy]

4. Ironic, Coming From Him

Talking about the government rationally compensating hospitals is really a hoot coming from the man whose company defrauded Medicare and Medicaid.

Guess he knows from experience when hospitals are cheating - kind of like getting a burglar to design security systems.

It would be funny if it wasn't so scary.

[MedicalAdmin]

51. So his plan is to remove the competition?

Honestly this is just a small step toward total assfuckery. Even public hospitals have become draconian and disfunctional due to the influence of private insurance on every medical decision.

Can't say I'm surprised. We are watching the end game folks. Time to bail out the bowl or bail out period.

[lark]

61. I believe that is the point

destroy the Jacksons' and put in more HCA's so more money for him or family who can rebate it to him.
Just like the hatchet job he did to teachers. Bet me someone isn't paying him a lot of money to privatize all/most FL schools. He'll be gone before it shows that FL has moved to 50th in education and is no longer growing but actively shrinking because who the fuck would want to work here?

[ironrooster]

71. I don't think he can do it - (politically)

because public hospitals are basically a subsidy to the private ones. IOW,
if public hospitals go - then people are going to
seek healthcare at any available (private) provider regardless of their
ability to pay. the biggest supporters therefore of public hospitals
are generally the for profit ones who don't want to serve "those people."

[MedicalAdmin]

75. Good point but if I may point out a growning trend?

More and more providers are going away from the hospital model and moving to split up services in terms of surgical centers, rehab centers, etc. These places are often owned by the same folks and what they have done is pulled the profitable parts of hospitals out of the hospitals and because they never register as hospitals they are NOT required to serve the general public.

If the public hospitals go expect this trend to accelerate like a rocket.

[DonCoquixote]

5. quote translated from bullshit

use taxes to compete unfairly with the private sector, and waste money from the hundreds of millions in taxes they collect to subsidize the treatment of those who can't pay.

Translation: we do not even want poor people to have options available to them, or for any government thing to compete with the private sector.

[Scuba]

6. Well, if anybody knows how to rip off the health care system...

...it's Rick Scott. But was he punished for his crimes? No, he's governor of Florida. Must make the informed citizens of Florida cringe.

[lark]

62. It makes me do more than cringe, how about cry and rage?

That would be much closer to how I feel.

[Ilsa]

7. What an obscenity this hypocrite is. A perfect Republican. nt

[Iliyah]

12. I see more the middle class and

poor will have to pay out of their small pay checks. If not coveraged by health insurance, Florida probably won't help in payment so God forgive if ya'll get sick, more monies coming out of your own pocket. Sad, Sad, Sad.

Medicaid, Medicare and Medi-Cal are probably on his very short list and will somehow get rid of it and won't allow HRC for the state and bring in his cronies to reap the benefits and eff Florida's residence. The haves will have but there will be more of the don't haves.

Again, WOW, how in the hell did Florida vote for a crook?

[eilen]

76. West Palm Beach

and The Villages.

[rurallib]

8. jesus on a potato chip. This guy is nuts.

[JJW]

9. Gov Scott should be in prison

This is nothing lower than a criminal who defrauded the health care system.

[nashville_brook]

10. holy shit. there's not going to be anything left of the state.

[lib2DaBone]

11. At some point Rick Scott and the Repukes leave injured people dying in the streets...

.. while they scamper off to their vacation homes in the Bahamas.

[geomon666]

13. What. The. Fuck. n/t

[nashville_brook]

14. Who advises Scott on healthcare you ask? Koch-funded Cato economist Michael Cannon

http://blogs.palmbeachpost.com/on-call/2011/02/25/who-advises-florida-gov-rick-scott-on-health-policy


His name is Michael F. Cannon, and he’s an economist who works for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that was co-founded by Koch Industries’ scion Charles Koch in 1977.

[global1]

15. Well We Know How This Study Will Turn Out........nt

[hatrack]

36. Private Sector Good! Public Sector Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!

There, that was easy!

[tpsbmam]

16. Damn. So many states fighting such Rethug thieves. Ohio and Florida are the

two that I find scariest. Well, wait....there's Maine. Hmmmm, and NJ... I sincerely hope that people who voted for these assholes get a clue and fast so they start fighting back and don't make such asinine decisions come the next election day. There will always be those whose heads are so far up their asses they've been deprived of oxygen so long their fried brains are permanently lost but shit, there better be enough who are able to learn & willing shift their votes to Dems.

:scared:

[Canuckistanian]

17. Compete fairly???

Why do hospitals need to compete AT ALL? Hospitals should be COOPERATING.

Sorry, but I'm Canadian and this make ZERO sense to me.

[Frisbee]

18. Very little here does lately. n/t

[bluesmail]

19. The Nazi's are coming. The Nazi's are coming. eom

[FiveGoodMen]

48. The Nazis are here and in charge.

[lark]

63. Sadly, that's very true

Even more sadly, most Americans have no clue what is going on. Although, I don't believe any union workers will be voting Repug anymore

[KurtNYC]

66. An elderly german lady told me that they didn't realize their country

had gone fascist until it was too late. They take over the main media early. She intended it as a warning.

[FiveGoodMen]

67. And this time around they hid behind Godwin -- may he rot in hell.

[BrklynLiberal]

70. "They Thought They Were Free"

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

They Thought They Were Free
The Germans, 1933-45
Milton Mayer

But Then It Was Too Late

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

<snip>

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

<snip>

[russspeakeasy]

20. The voter turn out was so low and the other candidates so f...ing weak

we got this piece of shit governor to deal with. I live here,
but damnit, Florida got the governor they deserve. Next time
maybe we can have turnout above 15%....lazy, brain dead
bastards.

[demwing]

29. NOBODY deserves Rick Scott

I live here too.

Earlier in the thread I said he's evil. I don't think he is...not by the common definition of the word.

Scott is the ultimate example of what happens when you run a State like a business. Not evil - but more sociopathic, which can be said for corporations as well. By design, a corporation (if it had a personality), would probably be diagnosed as sociopathic. I think that Scott is so overwhelmed by his corporate instincts, that he can't understand the harm he is causing. He just lacks a social conscience.

[Downwinder]

22. Is he going to handout euthanasia pills or just make people suffer?

[Hannah Bell]

28. They will be bled & made to pay for it first.

[think]

23. Rick Scott has committed crimes against the American people

and he should be treated like the criminal he is by everyone he meets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott#Columbia.2FHCA_fraud_case_details

[PA Democrat]

25. Republican governors are holding a going out of business sale.

Sell off and privatize all of the people's assets: Jails, highways, state liquor stores, schools,hospitals. Open up public lands to drilling, fracking, mining.

And then you have a government small enough to drown in Grover Norquist's proverbial bathtub. Mission accomplished for our corporate overlords.

[The_Casual_Observer]

26. They will compete to provide the best possible care for the lowest cost

Don't bet on it. It's more like the least they can get away with providing for the most they can charge.

[demwing]

27. The only updside to Scott

is that his absolute evilness will eventually push Florida firmly into the "Blue" column - maybe for a full generation of voters.

[The Backlash Cometh]

39. That's what I've been saying.

Of course, the key is to stop them from stealing elections.

[SoapBox]

30. Well of course he would do this...Gov. "Medicare FRAUD" Scott would want all...

...healthcare to be for BIG PROFIT.

This guy is scum.

[defendandprotect]

31. Close down Scott - not hospitals -- pick up a straight jacket for that guy -- !!

[Solly Mack]

32. K&R

Damn

[lz1122]

33. I wonder how many senior citizens voted for Scott

I live in Florida and did medical billing for a few and a lot of senior citizens who had medicare also relied on medicaid to cover anything medicare did not. It's interesting to see since Scott wants to pretty much kill every social program from health care to education how much of an impact it will have on people who voted for him. I'm doing my best to get out of this State myself as I'm not crazy about living here. When he got elected I was thinking it will probably take a little bit of time for him to implement his plans but things seems to be moving pretty quickly now.

[think]

34. growing up I stayed with my grandmother with alzheimers

And the Republicans still sent someone over with her absentee ballot every year to help her vote even though she hardly knew who I was let alone who or what was on the ballot....

[Overseas]

35. More material for the recall. Hope they use it.

I'm still surprised that Walker has over 30% support.

That so many people are still buying the privatization dogma.

There are certain areas that should never be privatized-- healthcare, prisons, schools, social security (self funded, lockbox required) and even mass transit (could be funded by defense dollars since it reduces the need for oil wars).

[Pacifist Patriot]

40. No recall in Florida.

[HockeyMom]

47. There is a petition going around

to put it on the ballot to amend the state constitution to allow it. I signed it. I forgot how many signatures they needed, but with my signature it was pretty close.

It's being written by the state's public unions. We can only HOPE.

[Overseas]

80. Glad to hear it. When crooks and cruel GOP ideologues

get "elected," the people need to have a recourse.

This whole troop of GOP sociopaths needs to be tossed out.

And we need paper ballots back again. And nonpartisan election officials who won't put 3 machines in a Democratic district and 15 in the same size Republican district, and their many other attempts to make it tougher for Democrats to vote.

They crushed ACORN already. Because they got a lot of Democratic voters out to the polls.

[The Backlash Cometh]

37. Like I said before. Things need to go the darkest before the light shines in.

At some point, people will wake up.

[FiveGoodMen]

49. ... so that we can all see the prison bars they've erected around us.

Then what?

[The Backlash Cometh]

55. Seriously, I don't know how it will happen, but I know what it will look

like when it does happen.

We saw it during Nixon's time when good Republicans stood up to clean up their own mess. We can sit here and say that the Dems need to make the next move, and surely, we should keep applying pressure. But, things won't really change until good people on the right open their eyes and realize that the way of life that they're trying to protect is a bubble that has burst a long time ago. They are living a lie that can't be sustained any longer.

[FiveGoodMen]

56. "good people on the right"

The right is defined precisely by those characteristics that are NOT good.

[The Backlash Cometh]

57. I know.

Like I said, I'm not sure how it will happen.

[midnight]

41. Yikes.....

[freshwest]

43. No surprise from this crook.

[thereismore]

44. Which part of "General Welfare" does this idiot not understand??? nt

[nightgaunt]

45. Revolution by other means

Smashing not with armies or weapons or threats. Writing in on papers. That is the continuing way of the current revolution against us started in 1979 and continues unbroken ever since.

[xxqqqzme]

53. Forget Kansas - What's Wrong

with Florida?

[jwirr]

58. So when the private hospital refuses to take a case as we have seen

happen in the past can the patient or patients family sue the state for negligence?

[liberation]

59. It makes perfect sense, he needs to find a way to pay for all those urine tests...

... and we all know god kills a kitten whenever taxes on the rich are raised. Sooooo....

[BlueJac]

60. FUCK RICK SCOTT..........

I live here and he is an ASSHOLE IDIOT, that loves sucking

[Enthusiast]

64. Scott is the worst. nt

[louslobbs]

65. Wisconsin Dicktator Scott Walker in Psycho1 and Florida Dicktator Rick Scott in Psycho2

Stay tuned for Ohio Dicktator KaSick, in "Psycho3 The Republicon Party and the Hitlers Within" with a star studded cast of extreme white wing Republicons and their legions of loons.
Lou

[BrklynLiberal]

69. As this trend continues we are all going to be soooooooooo f**ked!!!!!!!!!

[nxylas]

72. If the poor are going to die...

...then let them do it soon, and decrease the surplus population. Bah, humbug.

[grahamhgreen]

73. We are in fascism, plain and simple.

[road2000]

74. And meanwhile...

Don Siegelman did jail time and remains under a cloud.

[border_town]

77. Florida you were my home

for 11 years, but boy am I glad I no longer live there.