U.S. senator Rick Scott’s appearance this week outside the Manhattan courthouse where Donald Trump is on trial in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case was initially pretty puzzling. Scott is well known for his fervent MAGA views, which sometimes seem designed to out-Trump Trump. But Scott does have a day job in Washington and is also running for reelection in Florida this year, so schlepping up to New York just to give the Boss moral support seems a bit excessive.
Scott soon revealed he had an ulterior motive for this show of solidarity, as the Miami Herald reported:
In a press conference outside the courthouse in Manhattan where Trump is on trial, Scott compared the criminal charges against Trump to the federal Medicare and Medicaid fraud investigation that resulted in $1.7 billion in fines against Columbia/HCA, the healthcare company that helped make Scott the United States’ wealthiest U.S. senator.
Earlier, in an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Scott claimed that the charges against Trump — who’s accused of falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment to a porn star — amount to “political persecution.” He said that he too had been a victim of a politically influenced justice system more than two decades ago.
“By the way, I saw this. It happened to me,” Scott said. “I fought Hillarycare, and guess what happened when I fought Hillarycare? Justice came after me and attacked me and my company.”
You have to wonder at the wisdom of Scott bringing up this stain on his career just as he’s running for reelection. Though he was never personally charged with criminal misconduct in the big-time bust of Columbia/HCA for ripping off Uncle Sam, and indeed secured a huge golden parachute on his way out the door, Scott has been unable to dispel the odor of corruption. It probably says something about his political skills and/or the incompetence of Florida Democrats that he’s never really suffered politically from this episode, even in the the highly Medicare-sensitive Sunshine State.
But apparently, Scott has looked at Trump’s ability to turn multiple criminal prosecutions into a base-pleasing badge of honor and decided to try it himself. He may not need the kind of legal immunity Trump is demanding. But he wants political immunity for the past misconduct of the company he founded on grounds that the entire Medicare fraud investigation was a piece of political jobbery trigged by his opposition to the never-enacted Clinton health-care proposal.
The suggestion is more than a bit outlandish. Many prominent people from both political parties opposed “Hillarycare” and somehow didn’t find themselves or their businesses under investigation for criminal fraud. There’s also the little matter that the record fines imposed on Columbia/HCA were part of a settlement in which the company admitted all sorts of wrongdoing, as a news report from 2001 indicated:
HCA admitted to a long list of charges, including submitting inflated bills and expenses to the government for payment; exaggerating the seriousness of diagnoses to increase Medicare reimbursement; illegally structuring business deals so that Medicare picked up the cost of corporate expenses; and providing doctors with kickbacks for patient referrals.
HCA also gave other inducements to win favour from doctors, such as free rent and office refurbishment and free drugs from hospital pharmacies. One of HCA’s most controversial business practices involved providing partnership investments in company hospitals for doctors, who could then refer patients to them. The programme was abandoned in 1997 when Thomas Frist Jr, the brother of US Republican Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, took over as chief executive from Richard L Scott, the founder of Columbia/HCA.
Even if you believe Scott’s (unsupported) claims that prosecutors influenced by political motives abused their discretion to go after one suspect rather than others, the underlying facts don’t seem friendly to his company — just as they don’t seem friendly to Donald Trump in his various cases. Whether you’re a health-care executive, a former president of the United States, or a yahoo storming the U.S. Capitol, posturing as a victim of political persecution shouldn’t wash away one’s sins. It’s telling — and disturbing — that Rick Scott believes his argument has merit in the court of public opinion.
