This morning's Washington Post:
Obama's opening gambit to dramatically expand the health-care system has attracted surprising notes of support from insurers, hospitals and other players in the powerful medical lobby who are set to participate in an unusual White House summit on the issue this afternoon. The lure for the industry is the prospect of tens of millions of new customers: If Obama succeeds in fulfilling his pledge to cover many more Americans, those newly insured people will get checkups, purchase medicine, undergo physical therapy and get surgeries they cannot afford today.
[...]
Not everyone is happy, of course, and lobbyists and health-care experts warn that major obstacles lie ahead...
Former Columbia/HCA executive Richard L. Scott has launched a nonprofit group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights, which promises a $20 million multimedia ad campaign warning that the country is hurtling toward socialized medicine. Scott, who was pushed out of Columbia/HCA in the 1990s and now runs a chain of Florida urgent-care clinics, said in an interview that he has put up $5 million of his own money to kick-start the effort, with hopes of building a grass-roots campaign.
Richard L. Scott? As if the Conservatives weren't already emptying their revolvers while pointing the barrel at their feet, now they tap this jerk to head up their opposition to Obama's health care plan. As Ezra Klein put it, that's "like liberals getting Franklin Raines to run their economic messaging or Bush tasking Donald Rumsfeld with a comprehensive defense of his administration's legacy."
Why? Because Richard L. Scott is one of the all-time villains of American health care. He was CEO of Colombia/HCA during the period that it bilked the federal government of hundreds of millions of dollars:
The company admitted to systematically overcharging the government by claiming marketing costs as reimbursable, by striking illegal deals with home care agencies, and by filing false data about how hospital space was being used.
The company increased Medicare billings by exaggerating the seriousness of the illnesses they were treating. It also granted doctors partnerships in company hospitals as a kickback for the doctors referring patients to HCA. In addition, it gave doctors "loans" that were never expected to be paid back, free rent, free office furniture, and free drugs from hospital pharmacies.
The investigation and the plea is an obvious blow to a company that became a Wall Street darling by promising to bring first-class business practices to the hospital sector, still dominated by not-for-profits. Under former Chief Executive Richard Scott, it bought hospitals by the bucketful and promised to squeeze blood from each one.
Scott was forced to resign in the wake of the initial fraud charges in 1997. Dr. Thomas Frist Jr., a founder of the original Hospital Corp. of America and the brother of U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., was brought in to replace him as chairman and CEO.
HCA/Colombia's offenses were so egregious that it was socked with over $1.7 billion in fines and penalties, the largest total in US history.
Now, off of his "success" by running a for-profit health care behemoth that managed to make it's profit primarily by defrauding the US taxpayer, he's enlisted the same scuzzy PR firm that perpetrated the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth fraud on the American electorate to help him attempt to defeat any meaningful health care reform.
Americans are finally fully realizing that Rush Limbaugh is in charge of the Republican party. Next up for us is to help the American people understand that many of the conservatives who make the most noise about how government supposedly can't be trusted with their health care are the very people who have led criminal corporate enterprises that turned profits primarily by stealing money from American citizens.