ICYMI: “Rick Scott’s ‘unvarnished truth’ includes some varnish”

Opinion: Rick Scott’s ‘unvarnished truth’ includes some varnish

John Agnew

Fort Myers News-Press

Friday, June 25, 2010

“The kindest thing you can say about politics in Florida is that it used to be worse. I remember a governor who had a car and driver furnished by the gamblers, who said they had too much money invested in him to let him run around loose. A group of Panhandle legislators, known as ‘The Porkchop Gang,’ ruled the Legislature before ‘One man, one vote’ became the rule. The Miami Herald used to froth at the mouth writing about those people, who could not have cared less.

“We built the new airport and several county commissioners went to prison for their imaginative participation. “Politics as usual,” we thought as they were carried off in a tumbrel.

“More recently, Gov. Charlie Crist declined to run for a second term, saying he ‘could do the most good for the people of Florida’ as a U.S. senator. Lawton Chiles spent years in both positions and found just the opposite to be true. Maybe Crist has figured out what Chiles could not, and that includes a convenient escape from the need to make difficult decisions in Tallahassee while the economy is in a funk.

We read about how political bigwigs use party credit cards like personal piggy banks. A former head of the Republican Party of Florida was arrested recently. And then there’s Miami. Where do they find these people?

“A few months ago I was watching television, minding my own business (I swear) when I saw Rick Scott announcing his candidacy for the Republican nominee for governor. “That can’t be right,” I thought, “Scott was CEO of a company that was fined $1.7 billion for Medicare and Medicaid fraud. It must be another guy.” It wasn’t.

“My memory was a little shaky, but after watching his political commercial every 15 minutes of every day since then, I can recognize his face just as well as that of the “for the people” lawyer. I’ve reached the point where I actually prefer Viagra ads.

“In case you have been ignoring this, Scott is the mega-wealthy lawyer who put together Columbia/HCA, a national hospital company (including Southwest Florida Regional Medical Center, locally) of which he was CEO. These were for-profit hospitals, and did they ever make profits. Executives were richly rewarded for success, and they conjured profits in ways that weren’t considered upright and honorable. After a few years the FBI swooped down on the hospitals, impounded records and discovered an overall pattern of fraud: false claims to Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare (military health care), kickbacks to doctors (not me) and capital expenses disguised as operating expenses (so they could be rewarded for buying buildings).

“Scott repeatedly pointed out that he ‘left the company before the fine,’ and he ‘was not charged personally or even questioned.’ That’s a disingenuous description of what really happened: He was kicked out by his board of directors, and this was the company he founded, for heaven’s sake. As we have seen, it is rare for a board to even speak harshly to the CEO, much less show him the door.”

…

“Scott has responded to these charges, and he does not deny history. “This is the unvarnished truth,” he says, and then he tells us the varnished truth. “My company made mistakes.” My mother would have washed my mouth out with soap, for that one. Systematic, carefully executed fraud is not a mistake. It’s a crime. Surely, a lawyer knows the difference – they pleaded guilty, you know. ‘And as CEO I take responsibility and learn from it.’

“He never took responsibility before; he always brushed aside questions with his “after I left the company” mantra. And what is he now claiming responsibility for? Mistakes? Crimes? Conspiracy to defraud?

“In the modern world, just what does ‘accepting responsibility’ mean, anyway? Voluntary prison time? Reimburse the company for the fine? Maybe it’s just words, words with no agreed-upon meaning, such as ‘the unvarnished truth.’”

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