By Jim Hightower | Published Thursday, September 24, 2009
Our country's corporatized healthcare system is so uncaring that 76 percent of Americans tell pollsters it must be "fundamentally changed" or "completely rebuilt." But Rick Scott says no, what health care needs is more corporatization - or even Wal-Martization.
Rick who? He's the ex-CEO of the massive Columbia/HCA hospital chain and a laissez-fairyland zealot who is feverishly opposing Barack Obama's health reform ideas.
I say "ex-CEO" because his profit-above-all-else approach to running Columbia ran it into a very deep ditch, which got him fired in 1997.
Among his "health care" tactics were overbilling Medicare, giving kickbacks to doctors who referred patients to his hospital, and dangerously understaffing hospitals to cut costs. Columbia later pled guilty and paid $1.7 billion to settle fraud charges against it.
Yet now he's running TV ads and infomercials featuring him as a health care "expert." Scott's ads attack Obama with that tired old bugaboo of "Government-Run Health Care," and to coordinate his attack he has hired the same PR hacks who ran the infamous "Swift Boat Veterans" assault on John Kerry in 2004.
Scott's television blitz features theatrical horror stories of "socialized medicine," direly warning that this is Obama's plan. Only... it isn't. Not even close.
Private doctors, nurses and others of our choosing would continue to provide our health care.
The change that Obama seeks is merely in how we pay these practitioners.
By offering a new "public option" we'd have the choice of sticking with an insurance corporation, or buying into a public insurance pool.
You can reach Jim Hightower at www.jimhightower.com. His column is distributed by Minutemanmedia.org. The Messenger welcomes your comments on its editorial columns, which are printed to promote discussion.
