Florida Governor 2011-19, US Senate with Marco Rubio 2019-
- Florida
- Palm Beach
- Moscow in Miami
- Matt Gaetz
- Pam Bondi-FL Attorney General 2011-19
Struck it rich in the largest health care fraud in US history
Wikipedia “In 1988, Scott and Richard Rainwater, a financier from Fort Worth, each put up $125,000 in working capital in their new company, Columbia Hospital Corporation,[23] and borrowed the remaining money needed to purchase two struggling hospitals in El Paso for $60 million.[24] Then they acquired a neighboring hospital and shut it down. Within a year, the remaining two were doing much better.[18] By the end of 1989, Columbia Hospital Corporation owned four hospitals with a total of 833 beds.[24]
In 1992, Columbia made a stock purchase of Basic American Medical, which owned eight hospitals, primarily in southwestern Florida. In September 1993, Columbia did another stock purchase, worth $3.4 billion, of Galen Healthcare, which had been spun off by Humana Inc. several months earlier.[25]
On March 19, 1997, investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Health and Human Services served search warrants at Columbia/HCA facilities in El Paso and on dozens of doctors with suspected ties to the company.[31] Eight days after the initial raid, Scott signed his last SEC report as a hospital executive. Four months later, the board of directors pressured Scott to resign as Chairman and CEO.[32] He was succeeded by Thomas F. Frist Jr.[33] Scott was paid $9.88 million in a settlement, and left owning 10 million shares of stock then worth more than $350 million.[34][35][36] The directors had been warned in the company’s annual public reports to stockholders that incentives Columbia/HCA offered doctors could run afoul of a federal anti-kickback law passed in order to limit or eliminate instances of conflicts of interest in Medicare and Medicaid.[33]
During Scott’s 2000 deposition, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment many times.[37] In settlements reached in 2000 and 2002, Columbia/HCA pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and agreed to a $600+ million fine in what was at the time the largest health care fraud settlement in American history. Columbia/HCA admitted systematically overcharging the government by claiming marketing costs as reimbursable, by striking illegal deals with home care agencies, and by filing false data about use of hospital space.”
