Who is Richard Scott? What the Wall Street Journal won't reveal

Group launches health care offensive
By JONATHAN MARTIN | 3/3/09 4:18 AM EST
Firing some of the first shots in the coming showdown over health care, a conservative group led by the former owner of the Hospital Corporation of America is beginning a multimillion-dollar campaign Tuesday in opposition to government-run coverage.

Conservatives for Patients Rights is going on TV, radio and the Web in the same week President Barack Obama hosts a health care summit at the White House. The group’s leader, Richard Scott, is hoping a pro-free-market message will rally the right to join the fray on what may be the most hard-fought policy battle in the first year of the new administration.

“If we have more government involvement we’re going to have dramatically worse health care,” said Scott, the wealthy health care executive who is overseeing the effort and seeding it with $5 million of his own cash.

Scott, a major GOP donor, is pushing for four principles to any health care reform package: individual choice, competition between carriers, giving patients’ ownership over their own coverage and rewarding those who make healthy lifestyle choices.

“I want health care reform to happen but I want it the right way,” Scott said.

Toward that goal, Scott’s group is enlisting a group of veteran Republican consultants to fashion a multi-media battle, warning against the move toward more government involvement. The new group starts a three-week TV and radio campaign featuring Scott Tuesday and will plaster the Internet with ads while also launching its homepage.

The goal is to provide conservatives with a central organization to resist any move by Obama and congressional Democrats toward universal coverage. Scott said the group would spend up to $20 million on the campaign, and volunteered that he would consider reaching further into his pocket.
Scott shied away from comparing his effort to the famous industry-led “Harry and Louise” ad campaign that helped torpedo universal coverage in the Clinton administration, saying that while they may receive some aid from health care stakeholders, the “goal is to get support from individuals.”

Scott’s first salvo is being fired Tuesday largely on conservative talk radio shows and on cable news.

“Imagine waking up one day and all your medical decisions are made by a central national board,” Scott says in the radio ad. “Bureaucrats decide the treatments you receive, the drugs you take, even the doctors you see.”

He goes on to raise the prospect of “national boards” and “waiting lists” as in the nationalized systems of Great Britain and Canada. “That’s what some in Washington mean by reform,” Scott says in the spot.



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Some on the left have already formed their own group, Health Care for America Now, a coalition to push for guaranteed health care for all Americans. The group has a $35 million budget this year and is planning on spending half of that on advertising in addition to holding grass-roots events in Washington, and in the districts of key members of Congress.

“We are fully operational, organized, and mobilized to make sure Congress supports the president’s plan to win quality, affordable health care for all this year,” said Jacki Schechner, the group’s communications director

Pro-health reform activists also have begun circulating information in an effort to discredit Scott, a move that underscores the huge stakes involved in the issue.

According to a 2000 article in Forbes, Scott was forced to resign as head of what became known as Columbia/HCA after fraud charges against the massive health care company in 1997. He was replaced by Thomas Frist Jr., the original founder of HCA and brother of future Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.)

The company eventually paid over $880 million to reach a settlement with the Justice Department in 2002 on the charges.

Obama already has sought to rebut criticism that he wants a government takeover of health care by outlining eight principles of any overhaul, including letting patients stick with their own doctors and health care plans, reducing insurance premiums and guaranteeing that Americans will have a choice of health plans and physicians.

Beyond that, the Obama administration has signaled that it will push back hard on conservatives who try to label Obama’s efforts as “socialized medicine” or a massive government takeover of day-to-day health decisions. In his radio address Saturday, Obama said he’s ready for a fight against anyone who tries to block his efforts to remake health care and other programs.

But that’s exactly one of Scott’s key arguments. He said he’ll try to draw a comparison between Obama’s plan and nationalized health care systems in Great Britain and Canada, during the second round of its campaign, Scott said in an interview.

“We’ll give people information about how single-payer systems…impact the average person that needs expensive care,” he said.

To do so, Scott has enlisted former CNN reporter Gene Randall and another former producer from the cable network to travel to the two countries to gather footage.

Scott is now primarily an investor, but he does own an urgent care company with over 20 facilities across the country. He said he draws a “very insignificant amount of money from Medicare and Medicaid” and that his primary interest is not his own bottom line.

“What I care about is the free-market system,” he said.

Editor’s Note: Conservatives for Patients’ Rights purchased advertising space on POLITICO.com for this campaign.