Dave Weigel was lucky enough to speak with Rick Scott, the chairman and primary funder of Conservatives for Patient's Rights, at a lunch yesterday. It's a pity he didn't recognize the opportunity. Instead, he chose to buy into the liberal media's gotcha game and pepper Scott with questions about his forced resignation from Columbia/HSA shortly before the for-profit hospital corporation paid the federal government $7 billion in the largest fraud case in history. Scott, however, parries with the ease and elan we've come to expect from the graceful former executive. "I left and nothing happened to me," he tells Weigel. "I can’t do anything about what people want to complain about. But if you look at what we’re doing, we’re doing the right things." Read that again. Nothing happened to him. Do these journalists really think they're superior to the U.S. Justice System? Because I don't. Weigel, though, won't drop it, even after Scott has graciously answered his questions, he rudely insists on pressing the issue. "People can still say, 'Look, this was the guy who resigned in the biggest fraud settlement in American history.'" But it's child's play for Scott. This is a guy, remember, who has directed board meetings and settled investors. Some ink-slinger isn't going to break his stride. "You know, we were the biggest company," he slowly explains. "If you go back and look at the hospital industry, and the whole health care industry since the mid-1990s, it was basically constantly going through investigations. Great institutions, like ours, paid fines. It was too bad." It was too bad. But the rest of us can be thankful that Scott hasn't let a $7 billion "fine" for defrauding the government cow him. Instead, he's still out there fighting for patient's rights with the free market principles that have long anchored this great nation.
