Former Head of Health Care Company That Defrauded Taxpayers Leads Charge Against Universal Health Care
For profit, bilk the system, cherry pick those who will get coverage, and charge an arm and a leg for coverage corporations are the ultimate fraudsters and thieves in the health care system that have caused this national health care disaster
And leading the charge is Richard Scott, former head of Hospital Corporation of America, that defrauded taxpayers and paid an almost $1 trillion fine for committing that gigantic fraud....which was getting off cheaply considering the extent of its corporate crime against the government and its Medicare program.
From Politico: "Firing some of the first shots in the coming showdown over health care, a conservative group led by the former owner of the Hospital Corporation of America is beginning a multimillion-dollar campaign Tuesday in opposition to government-run coverage.
"Conservatives for Patients Rights is going on TV, radio and the Web in the same week President Barack Obama hosts a health care summit at the White House. The group’s leader, Richard Scott, is hoping a pro-free-market message will rally the right to join the fray on what may be the most hard-fought policy battle in the first year of the new administration.
“ 'If we have more government involvement we’re going to have dramatically worse health care,” said Scott, the wealthy health care executive who is overseeing the effort and seeding it with $5 million of his own cash.
"Scott, a major GOP donor, is pushing for four principles to any health care reform package: individual choice, competition between carriers, giving patients’ ownership over their own coverage and rewarding those who make healthy lifestyle choices.
"Toward that goal, Scott’s group is enlisting a group of veteran Republican consultants to fashion a multi-media battle, warning against the move toward more government involvement. The new group starts a three-week TV and radio campaign featuring Scott Tuesday and will plaster the Internet with ads while also launching its homepage.
"The goal is to provide conservatives with a central organization to resist any move by Obama and congressional Democrats toward universal coverage. Scott said the group would spend up to $20 million on the campaign, and volunteered that he would consider reaching further into his pocket.
"Pro-health reform activists also have begun circulating information in an effort to discredit Scott, a move that underscores the huge stakes involved in the issue.
"According to a 2000 article in Forbes, Scott was forced to resign as head of what became known as Columbia/HCA after fraud charges against the massive health care company in 1997.. He was replaced by Thomas Frist Jr., the original founder of HCA and brother of future Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.)
"The company eventually paid over $880 million to reach a settlement with the Justice Department in 2002 on the charges."
It was one of the 20 largest cases of fraud against the government. aka the taxpayers.
Scott probably wants to make sure that the HMO get to bilk the government again, again and again.... He's had plenty of practice at committing fraud against taxpayers.
As Robert Dreyfuss reported in American Prospect : "In 1993, Frist, then a millionaire heart surgeon whose father and brother were billionaires, was hardly on the political radar in Tennessee. At the time, the Volunteer State was represented in the Senate by Jim Sasser, a wily Democrat who'd established himself as a leading expert on health-care policy. In the spring of '93, Sasser began holding investigative hearings into Medicare fraud by doctors, hospitals, and other health-care providers. Medicare fraud was becoming an enormous issue, one that generated the creation of special FBI task forces and other investigations, and Sasser wanted to know the extent of the problem.
"Little did Sasser know that the very biggest offender was none other than Tennessee's own Hospital Corp. of America. HCA didn't figure into Sasser's 1993 fraud hearings, simply because he -- and the FBI -- didn't know about the vast thievery being committed by HCA. For years, HCA and its predecessors, including a smaller hospital firm also founded by the Frists, had rigged Medicare billing systems to charge the federal government far more than was justified for treating ordinary ailments, a practice known as “upcoding.”
"The charges began to surface late in '93, when the U.S. General Accounting Office began to uncover a pattern of Medicare fraud involving HCA. Throughout the decade, charges snowballed against the firm. Eventually HCA would emerge as arguably America's most egregious corporate criminal, accused of having bilked U.S. taxpayers and the Medicare system out of billions of dollars. In a desperate effort to restore its good name, HCA would agree to three settlements between 2000 and 2003, paying civil and criminal fines amounting to $1.47 billion. Although several HCA officials were indicted, the settlement allowed HCA to escape further government action against it. Even the enormous fines paid by HCA may suggest a sweetheart deal between HCA and the Bush administration's Department of Justice, because under Medicare rules HCA was liable for treble damages for the fraud it engineered -- which would have cost the company many billions -- and could have been barred from doing business with Medicare. It wasn't."
And this hypocritical fraudster whose company not only fed at the government trough but defrauded that government is trying to destroy any universal health care being considered as part of health care reform.
Get out the truth megaphones about Richard Scott and talk about his record of fraud against the American taxpayers.
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