Thursday, October 01, 2009

Do you know who this man is?




His name is Rick Scott, and if you don't know about him maybe it's time you did.

He is quite possibly the most powerful man in A-merry-ca when it comes to this health care debate, and he is the repubs biggest trump card in it.

This article by Tristram Korten in Salon.com might give you a batter understanding of who -or should I say what-he is:


"For months now multimillionaire healthcare entrepreneur Rick Scott has been at the center of the aggressive campaign to derail healthcare reform in Washington, D.C. Reprising the role he played nearly 20 years ago, when as the head of a national hospital chain he helped kill Clintoncare, the former hospital-chain executive founded the group Conservatives for Patients' Rights, raising $20 million to fight Obamacare, including $5 million of his own money. The tall, lean Scott, whose shiny bald head swivels in exasperation at the idea of government involvement in healthcare, even stars in its nationwide ad campaign comparing Democratic proposals to socialized medicine. Through this group, he has fomented the conservative strategy to disrupt town hall-style healthcare meetings around the country by shouting down elected officials. (CPR sent schedules of the meetings to so-called Tea Party activists.) He can justifiably claim some of the credit for the Senate Finance Committee's two votes Tuesday against a public option. But in Rick Scott the right has found a frontman whose baggage threatens to overwhelm his message.

A linchpin of Scott's 2009 campaign has been the use of anecdotes from abroad -- horror stories from Britain and Canada meant to illustrate how government-controlled healthcare systems "clearly kill people" by controlling their access to care, as he told Fox's Sean Hannity in June. He even funded a documentary titled "Faces of Government Healthcare" cataloging the horror stories of British and Canadian patients who were purportedly denied medical attention for life-threatening illnesses until it was too late.

Yet even as Scott makes the rounds of Congress and talk-show green rooms, a wrongful death lawsuit has been working its way through the Florida courts against a doctor employed by the chain of walk-in clinics Scott founded. Scott has repeatedly bragged that the 27-clinic, Florida-based company, Solantic, is an example of the free-market ingenuity needed to fix our ailing medical infrastructure. The lawsuit, however, alleges a Solantic doctor misdiagnosed a patient's deep-vein thrombosis as a sprained ankle, leading to a pulmonary embolism and death. That same doctor was reprimanded by the state for misdiagnosing deep-vein thrombosis in a patient who died two years earlier. It's the kind of anecdote you'd expect to hear in Scott's documentary -- except that it condemns a free-market system where profit and patient volume may take precedence over care..." [More here]

I know that all the wingnut apologist will come to Mr. Scott's defense. Just the free enterprise system at work they will say. This is, after all, A-merry-ca. Actually, they might be right. I mean we find ways to profit from damn near everything else in this country, why not profit from sickness and death?




Thanks for the link Esther.












28 comments:

Obama mmm mmm good said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Obama mmm mmm good said...

fied,field,filled,

My brutha,you have waited to late to whip out a Republican boogeyman.

You should be telling Democrats to grab their nut sacks and have a vote on Obamacare.Democrats have the numbers to pass anything they want.

Citizen Ojo said...

So this is the guy behind the curtain??

D W JazzLover said...

People should really pay attention to this one and someone should really look into the cover ups of these cinics!I am serious.

Swiff said...

Mr. Scott's face kinda resembles a skull. How appropriate.


And Mr. Racist is still here? Shouldn't he be shooting up a museum by now?

Gregory said...

Much like Mr. R, Rick Scott is a scumbag. Unlike Mr R, Scott is a rich scumbag. I guess that makes him a better Republican than your resident troll.

Gregory said...

From today's Guardian:

Revealed: millions spent by lobby firms fighting Obama health reforms

Six lobbyists for every member of Congress as healthcare industry heaps cash on politicians to water down legislation

BigmacInPittsburgh said...

Sad part about it all is that the very same people being whippped into a hissy fit are the ones who stand to benifit the most from any type of healthcare reform!

field negro said...

I see our buddy mr r is back. How is life in wingnut world?

Yeah this guy is dangerous.We all know that money talks in A-merry-ca,and with his loot he can do a whole lof of talking.

field negro said...

"And Mr. Racist is still here? Shouldn't he be shooting up a museum by now?"

)))))Laugh(((((

Jody said...

Canadians are finding it fascinating that their health system is being held up as the "nightmare" scenario v what we currently have.....
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/reality+check+reality+check/1783177/story.html

And here, a poll of Canadians asking if they would prefer private v public run health care.... 86% say public!
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/12-10

And the real kicker, is ask any Medicare recipient if they will give up their Medicare..... answer.... hell no!

RepubliCON said...

"Sad part about it all is that the very same people being whippped into a hissy fit are the ones who stand to benifit the most from any type of healthcare reform!"

It would be funny if it weren't so sad. Just another example of lower income whites shooting themselves in the foot. Every damn year these fools get hoodwinked by rich conservatives to ignore their own economic interests in place of wedge issues like religion, race, immigration.

Talk about a slave mentality, they have it down pat. Half of these people still think the rapture is just around the corner. They complain about taxes, and again, most of these fools probably don't even pay any, or very little.

Anonymous said...

@RepubliCON -- You're close but poor whites have been unfairly maligned in terms of their perceived voting history and patterns. It's a persistent myth embraced by both left and right that poor whites vote republican but the truth is they don't. Voting data reveals that poor whites are still a part of the FDR/New Deal Coalition. Why this myth, which is a self-defeating one for democrats, not only persists but is embraced is a main topic of discussion for those of us interested in recapturing rural America (an area with no real party home despite GOP claims) and expanding democratic majorities outside of urban America. But contrary to the accepted storyline, the whites who vote GOP are those who are in classes economically above poor whites -- mostly working and middle class whites who, as you point out, shoot themselves in the foot as GOP economic policies are designed to dismantle and bankrupt the very middle classes they inhabit.

It's this group -- the redneck bourgeois -- as I like to call them, who are the real anti-tax, bible-thumping, angry xenophobes who are voting against self-interest when they vote for the GOP. They're a group that ranges from working class to real (in honest demographic terms) middle class and typically inhabits the suburbs as well as small cities and occasionally small towns. They've never known poverty and they don't know rural America any more than a kid born and raised in the Bronx* but they're often portrayed as Real America™ by both themselves and the media. IOW, they're today's Rhinestone Cowboy. George W. Bush, Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, and any number of bad country musicians all play at and to the redneck bourgeois who resemble a genuine portrait of poor rural white America about as much as 50-cent** or Sacha Baron Cohen do.

**Hell, both 50 and the kid from the Bronx have more in common with poor white (rural) America than the redneck bourgeois who fuel the GOP.

Like everything else in American politics it's a virtually unacknowledged, although particularly vicious, class war driven by those at the top against everyone else. The redneck bourgeois are just deluded enough to think they're not slaves. They fail to understand that unless your income is in the top 5%, the GOP doesn't represent you.

--j

ch555x said...

Anon@8:47AM-

Good points! RepubliCON does have some points as well since I do see both sides of the equation in my area of the Appalachians. The faux-real americans trumpet the usual schtick while the less-thans follow along only to get the short end time after time.

field negro said...

"Redneck bourgeois" j,I loved that!

BTW,I call the black equivalent new money Negroes.

Unknown said...

Redneck bourgeois. I know what you're talking about because there are a lot of them around and in Memphis. You're country but live in a $200,000 house? Right. But I think the whole issue with the anger out there is that a black man is signing the bills into, which require money. To a point, the President controls money and money is the only means of control in this country. You don't have it, you're screwed.

Anonymous said...

Field -- LOL. The Redneck Bourgeois and the New Money Negroes -- I think we've got the makings of a hollywood sitcom right there.

And Eddie, you got it both in terms of who they are and why they're angry.

--j

Anonymous said...

@ch555x -- You're right that too often some of the less-thans do follow along. Those types, and I've seen them in almost demographic category imaginable, usually harbor all kinds of self-hatred and the idea that voting GOP can somehow erase either their past or whatever it is they hate about themselves. It's sad to encounter those that hate themselves or they're family so much.

--j

Mrs. C said...

I'm feelin' your HFN today, and I am hoping and wishing and praying that SOMEBODY will go all Mr. Smith Goes to Washington on these freaks. He looks like the kind of guy who might have the fire, and this Scott monster could provide the fuel...

Anonymous said...

Hey Ya'll!! here about the Trainload of Chimpanzees that derailed just outside New Ahhleans???
What the hell, they need someone to work in the Crescent City...Only way you'll even be able to spot em from the normal niggers is Chimps aren't quite as violent...:)
And its the "Man Behind the Sheet" not watever dumbass said...

And can I be the first to congrat Chicago on gettin those Olympics??? You Go Girl!!!

Frank

Bless said...

"The corporation attracts patients who do not have insurance, cannot get appointments with their primary care physicians, or do not have primary care physicians. Solantic is intended to be an alternative to the emergency room care that these types of patients often seek, or for not seeing a doctor at all."

reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott#Solantic

So if I'm reading this right homeboy knows he's got a parasitic business model which profits exactly because there are patients who do not have insurance.

Greedy bastard.

Anonymous said...

RepubliCON, when you said the word (SLAVERY)do you have any Idea what you were saying?

If anyone is interested go to White Slave's.Com, you will find a bit of hidden history of the White man, that is slowly coming to the forefront!

We have three Group's of White's, the Wealthy, the Semi Wealthy white's and the Poor White's!!! and the Wealthy White's, Despise the Poor White's! why do you think the REP/CON are fighting against the Health Care Bill? what Race of people will fight against something that will benefit their own people? doe's this seem rational!

Now, we have REP/CON Black's but, how many have you seen coming against the Health Care Bill, Michael Steele may say something now and then but, not to the degree of the White REP/CON! these people want their own people to live in Poverty forever! this go's all the way back to Slavery!

During Slavery, it was just as many White Slave's as Black's, so that's why the poor white's seem to have a Slave Mentality, poor black's are told by Middle Class Black's as well as Wealthy Black's, to aim higher, regardless of your Circumstance's!

Poor White's are trapped by Generational Lie's! these poor white people are used by white politician's to keep them in office! these people are controlled by, Racism, War and Division!

The White man on the front is fighting to keep help from his own people, but, why should he care? after all, Rich White's have a name they call Poor White's! it's something you throw away when you longer need it!

iseeisee

Black Diaspora said...

"Working poor." I think the description is beginning to resonate for some who believe that they had a firm grip on the American dream.

On my block alone, we've lost two homes out of six to forclosure. Both were own by Native Americans who undoubtedly saw their income shrink as casino profits tank.

Just today an unemployment report put National unemployment at around 12%, I believe, and climbing, and the stock market in recent days has lost some ground.

The "American Dream" is always that, a dream, and never an anchored-reality for the working stiff, but is reserved for the super-rich.

A recent report states that, even in this recessionary economy, the gap between the rich and the poor is not narrowing, but widening.

If you've got a "piece of the rock" today, don't stand on it to beat your chest, and look down on your neighbors, it may be resting on top your head tomorrow.

Anonymous said...

Derrion Albert's memorial is destroyed

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.viewcustom&friendId=59791227&blogId=511974504&swapped=true

Alan Smithee said...

Field - on an unrelated note, I was hoping you would list Alan Grayson as your honorary! Bruh, I had my fist held high when I heard this on the news. And as a bonus, did you hear his interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow (you might want to consider her too, BTW...)? He called those on the far right "knuckle dragging neanderthals...". Truth hurts. Finally, a Dem grows a pair.

field negro said...

Yes Alan, I love that guy. he walked right on the set of Wolf Blitzer's (sp?) show on CNN and layed a smack down on everyone of them. Including the HN who was standing next to him.

Anon. 8:27OM, I hope that is not true. Damn!

Bless, you read right. My man is a trip.

Tdadpete said...

Thanks for the article. Good to know where some of the crazy-talk is coming from.

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