Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, Steve Forbes, and Michael Reagan all endorsed McCollum. And he still lost. What establishment politicians didn’t realize is that “We the People” would rather have the sketchy scoundrel than the useless dweeb who has had decades in government to do something bold and has done precisely nothing except misinvest state pension funds with his cronies Crist and Sink.
Rick Scott and Richard Rainwater each put up $125,000 in 1987 to start a company called Columbia Hospital Corporation. By 1995 Scott was running over 300 hospitals in a $15 billion congeries that also includes home-health services, surgicenters, clinics, labs, and other health-related enterprises - with 172,000 workers. It was the nation's largest healthcare provider and twelfth-largest employer. Not bad for a boy who grew up in public housing with his truck driver father and his mother who was a clerk at JC Penney.
According to his mother, if you went to Boy Scout camp with him, he was the boy who would do your chores for a fee. If you were in the Navy with him, he was the young married guy who took correspondence courses and brought cases of soda on board ship to sell by the can for a profit. If you knew him at the University of Missouri, he was the guy in college on scholarships and the GI Bill who managed to buy a donut shop with a friend, and put his mother in charge. He and his partner made enough money to buy and sell two more, tripling their investments. After getting his law degree at Southern Methodist University, he was the guy at the law firm who parked his ancient green Monte Carlo among all his colleagues' Jaguars and BMWs. He's just a saving kind of guy - and that's how he got the $125,000 that put him in business with Richard Rainwater.
Rick Scott was a sacrificial lamb during the Clinton Administration because of the successful campaign that he helped organize AGAINST Hillary-care. Scott fought Hillary-care to its death. (He also spent millions last year blanketing the airways in opposition to Obamacare.)
Clinton added thousands of pages of ridiculous Medicare regulations, then quadrupled the number of federal investigations. The Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, etc. were all fined for “fraud” - few could begin to interpret what thousands of new rules meant, let alone how to bill the 48 Medicare “fiscal intermediaries” and “insurance claim contractors”. Of all the medical chains fined, Columbia was the largest, so got fined the most. No one went to jail.
Anyone and any organization can run afoul of Medicare regulations or the interpretation of the regulations. Scott was painted as a bad guy when in fact, Medicare came after him deliberately since he was so large and so successful. When the feds come after you with an agenda, they can ALWAYS find something wrong. Unfortunately, most people have never been involved with billing for Medicare.
Our massive government has royally mucked up EVERYTHING it touches, and you think billing is different? For 22 years I worked at a medical facility that billed Medicaid and Medicare. The govt. changes their requirements constantly. I can easily see when you own that many facilities small errors occur and they would add up in a very quick order. Rick wasn’t filling out the claim forms, it was some low-level data entry clerk.
The problem with Rick Scott is he comes from outside the political world. He is not trained in the political world of corruption. He has money and does not have to depend on selling his soul to the company store. The establishment is scared to death of him.
Hopefully, Rick Scott will make sure Floridians are aware that Sink is a banker who fired 1000’s of people, created fee's for every bank transaction, was the chief cheerleader for subprime loans, and lost 61 billion of the pension fund on her watch.
Sink, along with Crist and McCollum, presided over the state's pension fund at a time when it lost 61.4 BILLION, or 33% of all of its assets despite 19 internal audits telling her, Crist, and McCollum to do something before it happened. They lost $250 million in their failed Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village (NYC) real estate venture. http://www.wftv.com/news/21463221/detail.html
Under Sink’s watch Ali Hammoud swindled millions from state coffers. He was arrested by the FBI, but much of our tax money is still missing. http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/jul/30/man-accused-bilking-florida-wire-fraud/news/
Sink has been implicated in a ‘Pay for Play’ scheme involving convicted fraudster Scott Rothstein. http://www.miamiherald.com/2009/12/29/1401364/sinks-deputy-helped-law-firm.html
Sink was paid millions of dollars while overseeing “subprime predatory mortgage lending.” She fired thousands of Floridians while earning her millions. http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2010/feb/24/republican-governors-association/republican-governors-association-blasts-sinks-reco/
One thing you said is correct, the establishment repubs backed their establishment candidate. But my choice was your run of the mill, been in polotics forever, repub or a CROOK. Given those choses, I hold my nose and vote repub.
In the general, my choices are CROOK or DEM. I can’t vote for a dem and I won’t vote for a Crook.
Scott is going to get Killed in the general. Won’t even be close, no matter how much he tries to buy the election.