Fraudster's Anti Reform Group Takes Credit for Helping Gin Up Town Hall Rallies

Anti-Reform Group Takes Credit For Helping Gin Up Town Hall Rallies

Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, the operation that’s running a national campaign against a public health care option, is now publicly taking credit for helping gin up the sometimes-rowdy outbursts targeting House Dems at town hall meetings around the country, raising questions about their spontaneity.

CPR is the group headed by controversial former hospitals exec Rick Scott that’s spending millions on ads attacking reform in all sorts of lurid ways, a campaign that’s being handledby the same P.R. mavens behind the Swift Boat Vets.

In response to my questions, a spokesman for the group confirmed that it has undertaken a concerted effort to get people out to the town hall meetings to protest reform. The spokesperson, Brian Burgess, confirmed that CPR is emailing out “town hall alert” flyers, and schedules of town hall meetings, to its mailing list.

These efforts — combined with CPR’s effort to enlist Tea Party-ers, as reported yesterday by TPM — provide a glimpse into the ways anti-reform groups are trying to create a sense of public momentum in their favor.

CPR spokesman Burgess confirmed that the group had set up a list serv designed to reach out to “third party groups” involved in the health care fight, including the Tea Party activists. And in a statement emailed to me, Scott, who was ousted as a health-care exec amid a 1990s fraud probe, took credit for the town hall showings.

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http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/health-care/anti-reform-group-takes-credit-for-helping-gin-up-town-hall-rallies/

WHO IS RICK SCOTT?

Rick Scott is a multimillionaire former hospital CEO who, in 2009, emerged as a prominent leader of the opposition to U.S. President Barack Obama's healthcare reform plans. Scott founded a group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights and put $5 million of his own money towards a television advertising campaign aimed at trying to build resistance to any proposal for a government-run health insurance program. Scott's ad campaign is being coordinated by CRC Public Relations, the group that masterminded the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry. In the ads, Scott argues that whatever effort Obama likely puts forth to change the health-care system, it will put the country on a slippery slope toward a bureaucratic, British-style national health service.

-snip
Maggie Mahar at the Century Foundation's Health Beat blog has written about Scott in her book, Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Healthcare Costs So Much. She reports that Scott previously started a for-profit hospital chain in 1987 that later became the $23 billion Columbia/HCA. He was ousted from this post in 1997 after:
the FBI swooped down on HCA hospitals in five states. Within weeks, three executives were indicted on charges of Medicare fraud, and the board had ousted Scott.

The investigation revealed that the hospital chain had been bilking Medicare while simultaneously handing over kickbacks and perks to physicians who steered patients to its hospitals. ... The company did not fight the charges. In 2000, HCA (which by then had expunged “Columbia” from its name) pleaded guilty to no fewer than 14 felonies. Over the next two years, it would pay a total of $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines.<2>

In 1997, Scott was forced out as head of the Columbia/HCA healthcare company as the result of a fraud investigation conducted against the company in the 1990s. The firm eventually pleaded guilty to charges that it overbilled state and federal health plans, and paid the government a record $1.7 billion in fines. Scott argues that he was never charged with any crime and that other health-care companies also received fines for overbilling.

Scott was also once a partner in the Texas Rangers sports team with George W. Bush and he now runs an investment firm and owns a chain of walk-in urgent-care clinics in Florida called Solantic.

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http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rick_Scott

HMMH...wonder why the US Attorneys didn't go after this guy? Could it be political?

And it is likely illegal in many jurisdictions where it's occurring. And these idiots are taking 'credit' for plotting to disrupt those public meetings.

Oh, I forgot: such arguments are only used against actions by the left, not the right.

they only had to pay $1.7 billion in fines

slap on the wrist

Bill Frist - SourceWatch During his tenure as the Senate Majority Leader, Senator Frist watched videotapes ... Rick Scott, who had been hired to run the company after Frist's brother's ... Hale and Dorr to defend him in connection with these investigations. ...
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Rick Scott: But everyone was doing it! - The Seminal ... Rick Scott was in charge of HCA/Columbia during the time the company was keeping two sets of books. He was bought out for millions (by Bill Frist! ... money and his corrupt Washington connections to fight health care reform. .... Muscle in the Health Care Debate: Targeting Senator Blanche Lincoln ...
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Advocate Yourself: Shout out to US Senator Richard Burr (NC) for ... "As a practicing physician, I have seen first-hand how giving government more control over ... Senator Richard Burr's (NC) The Patients' Choice Act 2. Rick Scott's .... The Medco/Obama Care connection · The impact of multiple physician ...
advocateyourself.blogspot.com/.../republicans-finally-add-to-health-care.html - Cached - Similar

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NEWSMEAT ▷ Rick Scott's federal campaign contribution search results Scott, Rick L Los Angeles, CA 90069. Self-employed/Real Estate Developme, BOXER, .... Republican us Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana says he will vote against ...
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Bill Frist at allexperts Sen. Frist with Sen. Lamar Alexander and Interior Secretary Gale Norton. .... Rick Scott, who had been hired to run the company after Frist's brother's ...
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http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-US&q=Sen+Frist+rick+scott+connection&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

especially if there are officials of the US government (congressmen/senators) present, yes?