Florida Gov. Rick Scott came out of
Wednesday's meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell with
nothing but a bizarre doubling down in his refusal to consider Medicaid expansion under Obamacare to ease both a hospital funding crisis and a budget crisis his state is facing. He's still insisting that the federal government reverse a decision made a year ago to end funding to a pilot project began under the Bush administration that helps fund charity hospitals. He's refusing to work with fellow Republicans in the state Senate who are trying to replace those lost funds with Medicaid expansion money. But he's upping his own crazy by now
picking a very strange fight with Florida hospitals.
He's created a Commission on Healthcare and Hospital Funding to investigate how hospitals use taxpayer funding, including political donations, lobbying efforts, quality and cost of care—a huge range of issues apparently meant to intimidate hospitals. Why? Because the hospitals have been staunch supporters of Medicaid expansion and have lobbied for it. Thus, they are the new Scott enemy (remember that before Scott was opposed to Medicaid expansion, he was for it). This investigation has served primarily to remind everyone of this:
Democrats were quick to bring up the fact that [the governor] resigned his job as the CEO of a for-profit hospital chain in 1997 after federal agents went public with an investigation into the company. Columbia/HCA later agreed to pay a record $1.7 billion in government penalties and fines.
"Now, Rick Scott—who resigned from the health care company he founded amid federal fraud investigations—has decided his time would be well spent auditing the books of Florida hospitals," Florida Democratic Party Chair Allison Tant said in a statement. "How does that help resolve the gridlock in the legislature? The only hospital management advice Rick Scott knows how to offer is training executives how to fleece the federal government for billions."
Scott's intransigence here is really baffling. Don't forget that he's also
suing the federal government because they are refusing to extend the pilot project, a suit that could cost the state millions. His hospital investigation commission isn't going to work for free, either. All of this in pursuit of federal money that isn't Obamacare to help balance the state's budget. Either he's lost his mind or he's thinking about joining the GOP presidential primary circus. Or both.