People in the news

Rick Scott (R)

Florida Governor (since January 2011)

(Scott campaign)

Why He Matters

Running as a political outsider in a year that favored them, Scott delivered one of the biggest surprises of the 2010 primary season when he defeated former Florida congressman and state Attorney General Bill McCollum (R) for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in the Sunshine State.

He delivered yet another surprise when his Democratic opponent Alex Sink conceded the very close gubernatorial race to Scott on Nov. 3, 2010.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Launched, Conservatives for Patients Rights (2009); Founder, Solantic Corp. (2001); Bought America's Health Network (1997); Bought HCA, Merged to become Columbia/HCA (1994); Founder, Columbia (1987); Johnson & Swanson (law firm)
Birthday: December 1, 1952
Hometown: Bloomington, Ill.
Alma Mater: University of Missouri-Kansas City, B.A,., business administration; J.D., Southern Methodist University
Spouse: Ann

Religion: Christian
Campaign Office: Rick Scott for Florida, 300 S.E. 2nd Street, Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
Email
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Path to Power

Scott grew up in a working-class family in North Kansas City, Mo. The second of five children, Scott's father was a trucker and his mother worked at J.C. Penney and occassionally took in ironing to makes ends meet.

After high school, Scott did a year of community college before enlisting in the U.S. Navy. He served 29 months on active duty.

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Early Entrepreneurialism

By the time he was 20, Scott was already master of the merger.

He bought two local doughnut shops, and consolidated them. While his mother ran the shop, Scott earned a business degree at the local branch of the University of Missouri, finishing in a lightning-fast two-and-a-half years.

After he graduated, Scott sold the doughnut shop at a tidy profit, married his high-school sweetheart, and enrolled in law school at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

Law Career

After law school, Scott won a job at the city's largest law firm, Johnson& Swanson, where he developed expertise in the health care and energy practices.

By his early 30s, Scott was known as a rising star in the Texas legal community. A partner in Scott's firm mentioned the young star's name to a billionaire Ft. Worth businessman named Richard Rainwater.

Rainwater soon paid Scott a visit.

Hospital Magnate

In 1987, Scott and Rainwater were two-thirds of a trio that made a brazen bid to take over Hospital Corporation of America (HCA).

HCA rejected their offer, but Scott's outsize Texas ambitions would not be denied.

He and Rainwater bought three rundown hospitals near El Paso, Texas. They closed one down, and within a year, were posting higher profits on the other two.

Scott's deep cost cuts and focus on efficiency above all else helped him turn his pair of hospitals into the Columbia Healthcare Corporation, which became a major player in the health-care industry in only a few years. In turn, Columbia's increasingly large size gave it a bargaining advantage that helped him cut costs even further.

In 1993, Scott became convinced that he had to grow his business in order to continue making money under President Bill Clinton's proposed health-care reforms. (The reforms later failed to make it through Congress).

A merger-spree ensued, with Scott acquiring hospitals and hospital systems across the Southeast.

Columbia-HCA Merger

In 1993, Scott won the biggest prize of all. He merged his Columbia Hospital group with HCA to become Columbia-HCA, the largest hospital chain in the country.

The massive merger made Scott president of a colossal hospital empire with 190 hospitals and 42,000 beds across 26 states. Scott was 40-years-old.

By 1997, Scott's empire had expanded to 341 hospitals. TIME magazine named him one of the 25 most influential people in the country that year, saying, "In an industry notorious for waste and inefficiency, Scott aggressively consolidates operations and imposes cost controls."

Medicare Fraud Scandal

But soon, Scott's cost-control methods were a target of a federal investigation.

In the late 1990s, government investigators were cracking down on Medicare fraud at hospitals across the U.S. Scott's hospital chain was the biggest in the country and found to be the biggest offender, too.

Evidence mounted that top HCA officials had kept two sets of books to conceal their real expenses from regulators. Scott was ousted by HCA's board of directors in 1997, taking a $9.9 million severance package with him.

By the time the case concluded in 2003, Columbia-HCA was determined to have committed the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history. It was forced to pay the government $1.7 billion.

Back in Business

Scott moved to Florida and tried to lay low, but he couldn't keep the entrepreneurial itch at bay for long.

In 1997, he got into television. He purchased a controlling interest in America's Health Network, which later merged with Fox Entertainment to become Discovery Health.

In 2001, he co-founded Solantic, a chain of walk-in health clinics with 26 locations throughout the Sunshine State.

Conservatives for Patients' Rights

In 2009, newly-inaugurated President Barack Obama pledged to overhaul the nation's health-care system. Scott burst onto the political scene to combat the reforms.

He founded Conservatives for Patients' Rights, and bankrolled it with his own large fortune.

It was great exposure for Scott, who personally starred in the group's ubiquitous TV ads, even though activists on both sides thought he lacked credibility as a spokesman.

CPR made it its mission to stop all of Obama's health reforms, but the group had a special arrow in its quiver for the "public option," which would have given all U.S. citizens the choice, but not the obligation, to buy health insurance from a federally-funded program, similar to Medicare.

In 2010, health-care reform was signed into law, but without the public option. Democrats declared victory; so did Scott.

Instead of sticking around to fight through the law's implementation, as similar groups did, Scott shuttered CPR and bowed out of the health-reform fight-at least in that venue.

As usual, Scott had bigger goals in mind.

2010 Florida Gubernatorial Run

In April 2010, Scott announced he was running for governor of Florida as a Republican, hoping to fill the seat vacated by Charlie Crist (I).

The moved shocked the Florida politerati, and prompted the Tampa Bay Tribune to ask, "Can the man who ran the company that committed the biggest Medicare fraud in history get elected governor in a state full of retirees?"

As the campaign went on, it seemed more and more likely the answer might be "yes."

Scott scored a surprise upset, when he took out Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum (R) in the Republican primary, winning a chance to face Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink (D) in the general election.

The Issues

A political outsider with a scandal-ridden past, Scott was not an obvious choice to run for governor of Florida.

But Scott managed to squeak to a slim victory in Florida's 2010 Republican primary, beating Attorney General Bill McCollum (R). Scott was greatly helped by the anti-incumbent sentiment sweeping the nation, and by the $50 million of his own money he used to bankroll his campaign.

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Cost-Cutting

If the former hospital magnate is know for anything, it's his cost-cutting skills.

"Some people say he is cheap but that is not the case," his mother, Esther Scott, told the New York Times in 1993, as Scott's hospital empire was reaching its zenith. "It's just that from the time he was 16, he has always been very thrifty."

Maybe too thrifty. In 1997, Scott was forced out of his job heading Columbia-HCA when the company was charged with cheating the Medicare system. It would later prove to be the largest case of Medicare fraud in U.S. history.

TIME magazine credited Scott's tight-fisted approach to managing his hospitals with contributing to the managed-care revolution of the 1990s, when insurers gained more say over which procedures and services patients were allowed to receive.

Fighting Obama's Health-Care Plan

Though he's a novice at running for office, Scott was no stranger to politics by the time he announced his intention to run for Florida governor.

As President Obama ramped up his push to overhaul the nations' health-care system in 2009, Scott hit back. He founded and personally bankrolled Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR), one of the most vocal anti-reform groups.

CPR wanted to stop all health reforms, but it especailly opposed the "public option," which would have given all U.S. citizens the option, but not the obligation, to buy health insurance from a federally-funded program, similar to Medicare.

For a hospital maven like Scott, this was awful news. Medicare's size had always meant it had unmatchable bargaining power. As a result the government program paid hospitals the lowest rates of any insurer, and was extremely strict about what costs it would reimburse to doctors and hospitals.

That meant Medicare patients were never very profitable for hospitals, but the size of the program meant hospitals couldn't stop accepting Medicare.

It was the same bargaining chip Scott had used to grow his chain of hospitals. But if Medicare expanded to cover all Americans, the advantage would go to the other side.

CPR ran a slew of television ads, starring Scott himself, and CPR took credit when Americans turned vehemently against the idea of a public option. The proposal didn't make it into the final legislation.

The Network

When Scott's Columbia Healthcare Corporation merged with the HCA hospital chain, Scott became president and former HCA head Dr. Thomas Frist became chairman. Frist, whose father founded HCA, was the brother of then-Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who would later become Senate majority leader.

Former GOP House Conference Chairman, Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Fla.), was inaugurated as Florida agricultural commissioner at the same time as Scott.

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Additional Resources