Rick Scott for Governor?

Rick Scott, the Republican who is tapping his personal fortune to be Florida's next chief executive, wants to "make government justify every dollar it spends, every year. That's what I've done in business, that's what I'll do as governor."

Here's what Mr. Scott did in business. As co-founder and CEO of the hospital company Columbia/HCA, he ran a business that paid a $1.7 billion fine - the largest ever - to atone for fraud that included bilking Medicare out of billions of dollars. This self-professed hands-on manager, who says he'll watch over every state dollar, escaped prosecution by claiming that he didn't know what his company was doing.

Shortly after the FBI raided Columbia/HCA's offices, Mr. Scott was ousted. He got to keep $10 million in severance and stock worth a reported $300 million, fattened by all those Medicare overcharges.

Mr. Scott promises to hold government accountable and cut costs. But the business he ran ripped off government, which means that it ripped off taxpayers. He didn't hold his own business accountable. Government had to hold his business accountable.

Mr. Scott wants to run government like a business. Floridians would have to hope that he doesn't run Florida like he ran his own business.

(Source.) From Wikipedia here:

Numerous New York Times stories, beginning in 1996, began scrutinizing Columbia/HCA's business and Medicare billing practices. These culminated in the company being raided by Federal agents searching for documents and eventually the ousting of Scott by his fellow board directors.^[11] Among the crimes uncovered were doctors being offered financial incentives to bring in patients, falsifying diagnostic codes to increase reimbursements from Medicare and other government programs, and billing the government for unnecessary lab tests^[12], though Scott personally was never charged with any wrongdoing. HCA wound up pleading guilty to more than a dozen criminal and civil charges and paying fines totaling $1.7 billion. In 1999, Columbia/HCA changed its name back to HCA, Inc.

In 2001, HCA reached a plea agreement with the U.S. government that avoided criminal charges against the company and included $95 million in fines.^[4] In late 2002, HCA agreed to pay the U.S. government $631 million, plus interest, and pay $17.5 million to state Medicaid agencies, in addition to $250 million paid up to that point to resolve outstanding Medicare expense claims.^[13] In all, civil law suits cost HCA more than $1.7 billion to settle, including more than $500 million paid in 2003 to two whistleblowers.^[4]

See here too.