Rick Scott and the Corporate Takeover of Florida

Since Rick Scott bought the Florida Governor’s office, one question has been plaguing me: what’s in it for him? A self-described business-man with no political experience drops over $70 million on his campaign. What’s the pay-off for his large investment? An answer is beginning to materialize, and it’s unsettling how not-surprising it is.

Rick Scott on Cluster FOX

Scott was forced out as head of the for-profit hospital chain Columbia/HCA as a result of federal investigation against the company (who later plead guilty to Medicare fraud and paid a record $1.7 billion in fines). It was revealed that the company had been ripping off Medicare while giving kickbacks to doctors who steered patients to their hospitals.  6 days before he announced his candidacy, Rick Scott was deposed for a federal investigation on fraudulent business practices at his company Solantic.

As Governor, Voldemort transferred his Solantic ownership to his wife’s name. Solantic is regulated by the state, administers Medicaid, is licensed through the Agency for Health Care Administration, The Department of Health licenses its doctors, and both agencies’ secretaries are appointed by the Governor.

Governor Voldemort is very open about his opposition to the Patients for Affordability Act (cleverly referred to as “ObamaCare”). Not only does he refuse to implement the law, he organized raised over $20 million to fight the reform in 2009. Rick Scott is the founder of Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR), one of the front groups who coordinated with allied groups (including Koch owned “Americans for Prosperity”) protestors at town-hall meetings nationally. This flyer was one of many they sent with schedules of meetings.

Scott has also recently taken action against pill-mill regulation. His controversial plans to kill the prescription drug database allowing  law-enforcement to track patients that “doctor shop” to obtain prescriptions for pain-killers like oxycodone. Solantic currently sells on-site prescription medication, and recently announced news they’ll be selling them at a deep discount.

So what do you think Rick Scott hopes to profit from his $70 billion investment?

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12 Comments

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12 responses to “Rick Scott and the Corporate Takeover of Florida

  1. Cheryl

    First of all….check your spelling! Second….why shouldn’t a patient be able to drug shop for cheaper drugs. Third….why would you want government to regulate your healthcare.

    • First I’d like to thank you for the input. But I’m not really sure where you think my spelling needs to be checked, so it would be helpful if you indicated that. To your other points, why would you not want the government to ensure that you have the highest quality medication at the lowest price? The idea behind doctor shopping isn’t about getting a cheaper price for meds (that would have more to do with pharmacy shopping and the type of prescription drug coverage one has). The concept deals with drug dealers and users who go to multiple doctors (prescribers) at a time in order to obtain multiple prescriptions of highly potent narcotic pain killers to either feed their addiction (and eventually overdose) or sell to kids. There are something like 7 deaths per day due to overdoses on prescription pain killers and the database has been successful in curtailing those odds in other states.

  2. Pingback: Florida Governor Rick Scott thinks you’re on drugs | Educated Rants

  3. Danu

    I have lived long enough in Tallahassee to see 5 Govenors come and go before Scott… OMG… He is a living and breathing Sociopath and he is our short term Governor…
    His Qualities match a Sociopaths Qualities…see below:

    Contemptuous of those who seek to understand them
    Does not perceive that anything is wrong with them
    Authoritarian
    Secretive
    Paranoid
    Only rarely in difficulty with the law, but seeks out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired
    Conventional appearance
    Goal of enslavement of their victim(s)
    Exercises despotic control over every aspect of the victim’s life
    Has an emotional need to justify their crimes and therefore needs their victim’s affirmation (respect, gratitude and love)
    Ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim
    Incapable of real human attachment to another
    Unable to feel remorse or guilt
    Extreme narcissism and grandiose
    May state readily that their goal is to rule the world (well maybe not the world…definitely the State Government of Florida…for now…anyway)

  4. Pingback: Florida Governor Rick Scott Thinks You’re on Drugs « Educated Rants

  5. Ian MacLeod

    The first link I tried said I don’t have permission to view the document. The second one required me to sign on to yet another blog. You need to stop linking to places that don’t work or – well, dammit, just link to something that can be reached without a lot of folderol to go through, okay?

    The article is okay, but I think you could very likely get together a lot more info. Is he, as I seem to recall, owner or investor in a piss testing outfit on top of everything else? That would fit.

    Ian

  6. Ian MacLeod

    The RadRight/’elites’/corporations have milked the Drug War for probably more and any other single resource save the invasion and occupation of the oil countries of the M.E. They have an estimated 70 million or so chronic pain patients whose lives they have destroyed and most of whom they have kept down in utter poverty and misery. This is on top of all the other misery and the going on three million now in prison plus the seven point whatever million trapped in and by the legal system in other ways. They’ve removed any benefits from the poor who find ways to work – it will lose them so many benefits that they will instantly be knocked back down to being worse off than they were. For the now-criminalized, there is no “paying your debt to society”; you’re a criminal forever, almost unhireable, disenfranchized most of the time, and with most rights “suspended’ – gone for all intents and purposes. They’re very, very good at setting up no-win situations for people and laying the blame on the victims.

    This has been such a clear, obvious effort to destroy America qua America, it amazes me that not enough people picked up on it long ago to act against it, but that’s how has gone. They are traitors, sadists, true sociopaths, destroyers, thieves, mass murderers, and they have even, with the usual arrogance of sociopaths, repeatedly published their intent to destroy the majority of the human race and to rule the remainder as owners. The sole recourse they’ve left is a real, bloody-handed rebellion, and I do not believe that Americans are fit any longer to take that course. Right now those who see what’s really happening and trying to “awaken” the rest are isolated in relatively small numbers and separated by being spread out over the whole country. A rebellions would be easy to put down with the militarized, brainwashed police and the vast majority of the military. Firings and retirements of conscience have left only the gamers and wannabe players in charge, and they will continue, as Petraeus (Betray-us) has. I see very little chance of stopping this, and the timetable has been accelerated now. The Republicans and the rest of the RadRight are attacking from every direction, possibly trying to cause some attempts at rebellion so they can declare martial law and make some examples of people.

    “The Law” is NOT what people believe it is. Congress is a corporate entity, as is the rest of the “Federal Government.” It’s all the Rothschild and a few others-owned Central Banking system’s dependent corporations, this one in D.C. being the “United States, Inc.” They don’t HAVE to obey the Constitution; that’s why they often don’t. It’s been that way since Lincoln’s time, and anyone who actually make a bid to interfere with the Fed gets assassinated. By THEIR laws, they even own US, and they seem to be about ready to put away, or throw away, their toys.

    I really hope I’m wrong.

    Ian

    • The radical right has been doing this for a few decades. You’re not wrong, but the problem is that Americans (the voting bloc, anyway) has such a short memory that they keep electing Radical right wing GOPers 2 years after they effed up the country. There will/needs to be a big Democratic uprising in 2012, but until then the GOP had their talons on the country. This happened in the 90’s as well. Our problem is that we have a media that panders to their beliefs, by trying not to be biased they let their lies go unchallenged – it’s just presented as “the right says….”; and the party leadership has left a lot to be desired the past few years. I have a lot of hope in DWS being DNC chair (Florida will be focused on, as opposed to 2010 when they decided to only support candidates that had more than 50% chance).

      It’s creepy how the GOP seems like their agenda is on a fast-track to hell with no way back. However, I do believe in democracy, however optimistic that may be, and I really do believe in any recall efforts put forth.

  7. FireFlame

    Fact: There is no left wing media. The only media we have is controlled by 5 corporate entities. This would include new papers, television, and radio.

    Fact:There is no left wing conspiracy plotting to take over the world. This is gibberish left over from the 1970’s when everyone was worried about Communism.

    Fact: There is no Right wing or Left wing any more. It is all a show to make you think everything is still status quo.

    Fact: the media uses words on the “News” to create biases in your mind so they can influence your thinking.

    It is time to wake up! Stop believing what you watch on TV.
    If you are smart you can examine the careful words media uses to control your opinions and thoughts.

  8. Ian MacLeod

    I’d be willing to bet that “wellness testing” never shows anyone to be healthy! It wouldn’t be profitable.

    “I do believe in democracy, however optimistic that may be, and I really do believe in any recall efforts put forth.” – Actually, “democracy,” especially a “warm body constituency,” can’t work. And especially not in today’s America. As Franklin pointed out though, democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner. That’s why the Founders made it a representative Republic. It will take a repair of the educational system for even that to work. The responsible, intelligent and thoughtful majority of people needed to vote in order to make it work simply don’t exist in enough numbers in today’s America, or if they do, they must somehow find a way to work and act together, and the MSM is The Enemy. They’ll do all they can to paint anything of the sort as a “vast left-wing conspiracy.” The government would also likely act on that assumption as well.

    It ticked me off really badly to see that, after the Republicans screwed up so very badly and proved to ALL be utterly corrupt during Bush’s two (stolen) terms, people actually believed the transparent lies and voted the damned Republicans back in anyway! Between having the so-celled “Blue-Dog Democrats” to use to stymie the handful of actual loyal Democratic Congress-people, and having what I think of as moles and ball-less wonders in the Dem’s party the Republicans have done what we’ve been seeing: attacking, blocking ANY decent, necessary legislation and totally screwing over the populace. Why people continue to go back and forth, back and forth between the two parties when they have to KNOW what’s going to happen – the same old thing, over and over again – I can’t figure out. Both parties are now corrupt. With Jerusalem Joe Lieberman, the purely corporate Reps and Senators and the Blue-Dogs, like last time, if there’s a Republican majority (and there are maybe just two or three actual conservatives in the Republicans of Congress), they’ll do what they’ve been doing: dither, compromise us into poverty, joblessness and starvation, and try to negotiate with people who DON’T compromise or negotiate, they DICTATE. We MUST go Third Party (which is classed by the Fusion Centers, NSA and DHS as a potential Homegrown Terrorist indicator).

    The Tea Party, while there are some who are actual Constitutionalists, are completely suckered. The damned Koch brothers founded it in the first place, and no one remembers! They sent the busses, provided lunch and even signs to carry, taught them how to shout down any Town Hall speakers with screams of “USA! USA!” over and over, and predictably the idiots thought the corporate Republicans were actually going to work for The People. So there they go, voting to have their own throats cut along with ours too. Every lie they’re told by the Congress and the corporate-owned MSM which now has only a handful of super-wealthy owners is couched in patriotic-sounding Orwellian language with some evangelical religion thrown in, and the TPers suck it right down. The only voice the rest of us have is on the Internet, scattered over a thousands of blogs.

    The recall effort desperately need to be expanded – to ALL of the treasonous betrayer in Congress, and Obama’s sell-out corporate appointees in our regulatory agencies like the FDA, the CDC, FEMA and so on need to be charged with treason, among other things, and removed before they really do kill us off! And then there’s the Pentagon, run by Dominionists and opportunists like Petraeus, thinking they SHOULD have utterly unaccountable power, and working strictly for the giant multinational conglomerates that are controlled by – guess who! – the same people who own the Central Banks like the Fed. The entire government is shot through with people who have a totally different agenda than the one that most of We the People believe and just refuse to see the truth of.

    Ian

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