"Anyone familiar with
Rick Scott, Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR), and/or the Columbia/HCA hospital system knows that
$100 million is just a
drop in the bucket compared to
the fine Scott's Columbia/HCA paid for defrauding Medicarehttp://mediamattersaction.org/search/tag/richard_l__scott.
Rick Scott's company, Columbia/HCA, paid a $1.7 billion settlement after pleading guilty to several charges. The fraud was so rampant under Scott's leadership that some documents were brazenly "stamped with warnings that they should not be disclosed to Medicare auditors," "some hospitals were knowingly inflating the numbers reported to the Government in the cost report to improperly raise total compensation," and they "improperly included expenses for employee picnics, Christmas gifts and food for nonemployees at social functions as expenditures related to patient care in the cost report for its headquarters."
Columbia/HCA pled guilty to "overcharging the government," "exaggerating the seriousness of the illnesses" of patients, and giving doctors kickbacks in order to receive higher Medicare payments. Well done. It takes a special kind of person to steal money from a program that helps hardworking Americans."
