Richard L. Scott, builder of the world’s largest health care company, is taking on President Obama

[babylonsister]

Health Critic Brings a Past and a Wallet

Richard L. Scott, who built (and was ousted by) the world’s largest health care company, is taking on President Obama.

By JIM RUTENBERG
Published: April 1, 2009


WASHINGTON — Richard L. Scott is unusual in these tough economic times: a rich, conservative investor willing to spend freely on a political cause.

Mr. Scott is starring in his own rotation of advertisements against the broad outlines of President Obama’s health care plans. (“Imagine waking up one day and all your medical decisions are made by a central, national board,” he warns in a radio spot.) He has dispatched camera crews to other countries to document the perils of socialized medicine.

He visited with lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week, and his new group, Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, has hired a leading conservative public relations firm, CRC, well known for its work with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that attacked Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, during his presidential campaign.

Mr. Scott’s emergence this spring as the most visible conservative opponent to Mr. Obama’s not-fully-defined health care effort has former friends and foes alike doing double takes, given Mr. Scott’s history.

Once lauded for building Columbia/HCA into the largest health care company in the world, Mr. Scott was ousted by his own board of directors in 1997 amid the nation’s biggest health care fraud scandal. The company’s guilty plea and payment of $1.7 billion to settle charges including the overbilling of state and federal health programs was taken as a repudiation of Mr. Scott’s relentless bottom-line approach.

“He hopes people don’t Google his name,” said John E. Hartwig, a former deputy inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services, one of various state and federal agencies that investigated Columbia/HCA when Mr. Scott was its chief executive.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/02/us/politics/02scott.html?_r=1&hp

[stillcool]

1. HCA...isn't that

that the corporation Bill Frist got in trouble with the SEC for?

[asjr]

2. I believe that is correct. If there is any

scheme to make money out there, Bill Frist will gladly join in.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Imagine waking up one day and

discovering that all your medical decisions are made by a giant corporation whose profits depend on denying you health care.

Imagine waking up one day and discovering you have lost your job and will shortly lose your helth care benefits.

Imagine waking up one day and discovering that your health insurance will not pay for your bypass surgery because they have determined that your heart disease is a congenital, and therefore pre-existing, condition.

Etc.

[lxlxlxl]

7. here here...

imagine for profit companies looting medicare for decades for their executives

[SidDithers]

4. I'm sure Obama's response will be something along the line of...

"Bring it on".

Sid

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. I don't get it.

Is he pretending that Obama is pushing for real, single-payer universal health care? Or is he hoping that he public opposition to Obama will push liberals to back Obama's 'private health insurance for all' so-called health plan?

[babylonsister]

6. No one yet knows what healthcare reform will look like so I think

he's prepared to do anything to keep the insurance industry in the money.