Rick Scott tries to rewrite history on $1.7 billion Medicare fraud controversy

Conventional political wisdom would typically advise candidates to steer clear of mentioning their past controversies.

But U.S. Sen. Rick Scott went out of his way, quite literally, on Thursday to attend former President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial in Manhattan and remind Americans that he once ran a healthcare company that was slapped with the largest Medicare fraud fine in U.S. history.

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.”

Scott’s comments on Thursday marked a shift in strategy for the first-term U.S. senator, who has fended off attacks over his leadership of Columbia/HCA — once the largest for-profit hospital chain in the U.S. — ever since he first entered the political scene as a Florida gubernatorial candidate 14 years ago.

But in comparing himself to Trump, Scott — who is seeking reelection to the Senate this November — is also trying to rewrite history. Scott himself acknowledged years ago that his company had “made mistakes.”

“I was in charge and even questioned by authorities. But that’s not what matters,” Scott said in a 2010 campaign ad. “What matters is that the company made mistakes and as CEO I take responsibility and learn from it.”

In 2014, the whistleblower who helped the federal government investigate Columbia/HCA described a company with two sets of books and said he had “no doubt in my mind that Rick Scott was the leader of a criminal enterprise.”

“The fraud at Rick Scott’s company hurt seniors, it hurt taxpayers, it hurt everyone,’‘ John Schilling, a former HCA accountant who worked with the FBI in 1996 through 2003, said at a 2014 press conference. “Fraud was in the DNA of Rick Scott’s company from the very beginning and he was the father.”

Joshua Karp, a Democratic consultant with a long history of working on campaigns in Florida, said that Scott’s remarks play into Republican sympathies for Trump, who’s facing dozens of criminal charges across multiple jurisdictions. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last month found that nearly four out of five Republican voters agreed with the notion that the charges against Trump are politically motivated.

“His playbook isn’t message consistency,” Karp said. “His playbook is: say what you need to say in the moment to score the win.”

Former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who’s running in the Democratic primary to challenge Scott for his Senate seat in November, accused Scott of sucking up to Trump, comparing him to “a fan waiting for a selfie” with the former president.

“Maybe someone should remind Scott that rather than sitting in New York trying to suck up to a defendant found liable for sexual abuse, he should be at work focusing on lowering costs, securing our border, and protecting democracy,” Mucarsel-Powell said in a statement to the Miami Herald.

A spokesperson for Scott’s campaign declined to comment on this story, and referred the Herald to the senator’s remarks during his Thursday press conference in New York.

Scott’s corporate legacy

Unlike Trump, Scott was never charged with a crime. Yet the legacy of his leadership at Columbia/HCA has stuck with him throughout his political career and provided fodder for his opponents — not that it has ever hurt him.

He served as chairman and CEO of the hospital company until 1997, when he resigned under pressure after federal agents made their investigation into fraud at the company public by executing search warrants against hospitals owned or previously owned by Columbia/HCA.

According to federal investigators, the hospital company “systemically defrauded” Medicare, Medicaid and other federal healthcare programs, while paying kickbacks to its physicians.

Scott denied any wrongdoing, and accused the Clinton administration of seeking political revenge because of his opposition to a healthcare reform proposal dubbed by critics as “Hillarycare” after then-First Lady Hillary Clinton. By 2003, the company agreed to pay $1.7 billion in what was then the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history.

Scott’s resignation from the company was also lucrative. He walked away with $10 million severance pay, a five-year consulting contract and $300 million in stock and options. He’s now the wealthiest member of the U.S. Senate and has poured tens of millions of dollars of his personal fortune into his political campaigns over the years.

Scott’s critics — both Democratic and Republican — have sought to use the Columbia/HCA case against Scott. One oft-mentioned point is that Scott invoked his Fifth Amendment right — which protects individuals from potential self-incrimination — 75 times during a 2000 deposition in a civil case unrelated to the criminal fraud case against Columbia/HCA.

While Scott himself was never charged with wrongdoing in the government’s investigation into Columbia/HCA, he has repeatedly dealt with the issue on the campaign trail.

In 2010, during his first run for Florida governor, Scott sought to head off questions about his corporate record by saying that he took responsibility for issues at Columbia/HCA, even though he insisted that he was not aware of any wrongdoing at the time.

In 2014, former Gov. Charlie Crist introduced Schilling, the former HCA accountant, to reporters to give his story of how he worked with the federal government to investigate fraud at Scott’s company.

Scott made a similar claim in 2018, when he first sought his U.S. Senate seat, cutting an ad saying he “took responsibility” for what happened at the hospital company and claiming that it was the mark of a leader.

Scott won all three elections.

Speaking to reporters in New York on Thursday, he doubled down on his claim that he was the victim of a politically motivated federal investigation.

“I’m fed up,” Scott said. “I watched what happened to me and my company. I’ve talked to business people over the years, what’s happened to them when you have political persecution. And now I’ve watched what President Trump has — with all these cases. This is just simply — they don’t want this guy on the ballot.”