To the Editor:
The April 2018 AARP Bulletin headlined, “Protecting Your Medicare, Crooks Are Stealing Your Health Care Dollars.”
Governor Rick Scott, when he was the CEO of Columbia/HCA, a large for-profit hospital chain, oversaw what the U.S. Justice Department called “the largest healthcare fraud.” Examples of fraudulent actions included:
• Billing Medicare and Medicaid for unnecessary tests or not ordered by physicians.
• Attaching false diagnosis codes to patient records to increase reimbursement to the hospitals.
• Illegally claiming non-reimbursable marketing and advertising costs as community education.
• Billing the government for home health care visits for patients who did not qualify to receive them.
Crooks are stealing your dollars. Having made a fortune from for-profit health care and paying what was then the largest fine for Medicare and Medicaid fraud in U.S. history, Rick Scott, used his money to become governor of Florida. Then, as governor, he refused to expand Medicaid to provide healthcare to poor people.
He made his fortune from government paid healthcare — some of it fraudulently — and got rich. Then he used his fortune to become governor and deny healthcare to poor people.
He should be sent home to his taxpayer-paid riches and not promoted to be U.S. senator.
Alan Mytty
Village of Poinciana
