Thursday, August 06, 2009

CNN’s Rick Sanchez leaves Rick Scott fumbling to justify his health care corruption.

By Amanda Terkel

CNN’s Rick Sanchez ripped into Conservatives for Patients’ Rights founder Rick Scott today over his anti-health care reform advocacy efforts. Sanchez pointed out that Hospital Corporation of America/Columbia Hospital Corporation, which Scott founded, was charged with defrauding the government for more than a decade and had to pay the government a record $1.7 billion. “Some would argue, and it would be hard to say they’re wrong,” said Sanchez, “that you would be the poster child for everything that’s wrong with the greed that has hurt our current health care system.” Scott responded by pointing out that other companies also had to pay fines, which Sanchez responded was exactly the reason health care reform was so necessary:

How much more wrong can you be than what you just said? Not only is your company screwed up — and you just admitted to it — and you’re saying, look at all the other companies, they did the same thing! That doesn’t sound to me like a sterling system that we have, does it?

Scott became so desperate to defend himself that he tried to say the fines were paid after he left the company (even though the charges were from while he was there) and insisted, “No one went to jail.” Watch it:

Scott also said that the American public should “love” what his company has done for health care. But Scott didn’t start his hospital business for the sake of improving the quality of care in 1987, but rather wanted to “do for hospitals…what McDonald’s has done in the food business.”

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