1. United States
2. Fla.
3. Letter

By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-FL, knows a thing or two about Medicare fraud. He built and ran Columbia/HCA, the huge hospital company that’s become synonymous with mega-healthcare fraud since it was forced to pay $1.7 billion in criminal fines and civil restitution in the early 2000s. So it’s not without a heavy dose of irony that Florida’s junior senator is today sounding an alarm about an increase in Medicare fraud. Richard L. Scott was no longer Columbia/HCA’s CEO when those penalties were assessed. He’d quit under pressure on July 25, 1997, eight days after the FBI and Department of Health and Human Services agents raided nearly three dozen company hospitals in six states, including Florida. To cushion his departure, Scott raked in a reported severance of $17 million. Scott has denied any knowledge of criminality and later went to the Florida governor’s mansion instead of prison. And despite the extent of the fraud, he wasn’t charged with a crime, or even officially questioned by federal authorities, according to Politifact. Four lesser Columbia/HCA executives were indicted for Medicare fraud; two were convicted, but their convictions were overturned on appeal.  Dozens of other senior executives reportedly took the Fifth Amendment and refused to give evidence. Nobody went to jail. Years later, in July 2000, Scott himself cited the Fifth Amendment 75 times in declining to answer questions during a deposition in a civil lawsuit against Columbia/HCA. Politifact reported in 2014 that Scott declined, citing his lawyer’s advice, because criminal investigations were ongoing at the time. Columbia/HCA, now known as HCA Healthcare, and some of its subsidiaries pleaded guilty to bilking Medicare by submitting inflated bills, pumping up diagnoses to increase reimbursements, paying kickbacks to doctors for patient referrals and other crimes. But unlike the human beings that concocted those schemes, corporate defendants couldn’t be packed off to prison. Scott, 71, the richest U.S. senator (https://www.floridabulldog.org/2021/07/rick-scott-nations-richest-senator-gets-millions-richer/) with a net worth now likely in excess of $300 million, and his loved ones won’t ever have to worry about paying a medical bill. So in 2022 when Scott proposed his “Rescue America” plan that would have ended all federal programs after five years unless Congress voted to reauthorize them, it caught a lot of negative attention from both parties and he eventually backed down – altering his sunsetting plan to exclude Medicare and Social Security (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republican-us-senator-rick-scott-drops-plan-cut-social-security-medicare-2023-02-17/) . So it’s disconcerting that a guy like Scott, with a partisan penchant for calling out “wasteful spending” by Democrats, is making it his business to keep a watchful eye on our Medicare dollars.