“Privatization” is all the rage these days. All across America, lawmakers are selling public assets for pennies on the dollar to good ‘ole boys with teams of lobbyists, then allowing the private corporations to suck every last penny from the formerly public assets.
Roads are being privatized, sold sometimes to foreign corporations. Medical systems are being privatized, as in the case of Medicare delivery. And in Florida there are big moves to take Florida’s prison system private.
When public assets, like prisons, roads and medicine go private, money is diverted from the delivery of these essential services to the pockets of the already rich corporate executives. Take Florida’s much maligned (and for good cause) governor, Rick Scott. He ran a company that billed the Federal Government billions of dollars. A few dollars might have gone to provide medical care, but far more importantly, he diverted hundreds of millions of dollar to fatten his own pocket….money that he used to buy Florida’s top elected leadership position….
In July 1997, FBI agents raided Columbia/HCA accounting offices in seven states, including Florida. Within days, Columbia’s board of directors ousted Scott, but gave him a nearly $10 million severance package, including stock shares worth $300 million and a $1 million a year consulting contract. The company wound up paying more than $1.7 billion for defrauding the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs. USF Story
Now sure, all of that money paid to Scott was not pure profit, after all he undoubtedly paid his attorneys hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend him when the federal government went after the company, I ain’t really good with math and figgers and all, but the money paid to attorneys probably works out to like thousands of dollars for each of the 75 times Rick Scott took the 5th Amendment under oath in one deposition and when you get done there, here’s another fun deposition to look at Rick Scott Deposition.
It just blows my mind that this guy currently serves as Governor of Florida and even more mind-blowing is that other elected state leaders are goose stepping in line behind this creepy crook. The people of the State of Florida were conned when this crook was elected, and while we cannot do the election over, Rick Scott needs to be isolated by defeating every single candidate for state leadership that has supported him in any way. This must be a rallying point.
With all this in mind, it really made me furious to read how executives in New York made millions of dollars and led extravagant lifestyles by diverting money away from the mentally disabled:
Medicaid money created quite a nice life for the Levy brothers from Flatbush, Brooklyn. The brothers, Philip and Joel, earned close to $1 million a year each as the two top executives running a Medicaid-financed nonprofit organization serving the developmentally disabled.
They each had luxury cars paid for with public money. And when their children went to college, they could pass on the tuition bills to their nonprofit group.
