Rick Scott and Health Care: Phony Experience

Governor Rick Scott never fails to amaze Floridians with his lack of empathy and pure buffoonery. Scott’s handling of the Health Care Law, allegedly his area of expertise is further proof that this accidental Governor will need to be retired in 2014.

On Friday in front a group of newspaper editors, Scott again stated that Florida will “opt out” of portions of the law despite even though these portions would significantly lower the number of uninsured residents.  Florida will also decline to set up a  health exchange which would list options for those needing health insurance in the state.

For someone with so much “experience” in Health Care, Scott actually knows very little about the actual needs of patients, the role of the insurance industry and the continued problems Hospitals and medical facilities face because of a broken Health Care system.

Scott told the newspaper editors on Friday:

“The problem with health care is cost, it’s not an insurance issue. It’s the fact that health care is way too high,” Scott said. “If we want to make sure that people have access to health care, that they have the ability to purchase insurance, we’re not going to do it by just saying, ‘Oh, you get something.’ We’ve got to figure out how to do it less expensively and with more accountability.”

Scott’s attitude is one of a patrician whose history in Health Care is actually similar to Mitt Romney with Bain Capitol. He saw Health Care and Hospitals as an investment, a way to profiteer and in his private dealings rarely showed any degree of empathy for those his facilities treated.

Florida cannot after all be faulted entirely for Scott, as he is a carpetbagger, the latest  Republican non-native or non-semi-native export to our state who has plundered, pillaged, and destroyed what Florida Democrats built over multiple generations. (From my vantage point a statewide elected official does not need to be a native Floridian but they ought to know about and appreciate our state before running. Jeb Bush did not when he first ran in 1994, and nor did Rick Scott in 2010.)  From having a state government that was the envy of much of the nation in 1970s and early 1980s, Florida has become the national butt of jokes,  a safety net for people in other parts of the country to say “at least we are not from Florida.”

Scott and his Republicans talk about personal responsibility but beginning with Jeb Bush’s election in 1998, the GOP has failed to take any responsibility for their failings as a governing majority. They are unwilling to play by the rules of the game and constantly rewrite those rules to fit their agenda. Health Care is yet another example of this dangerous GOP mentality.

Republicans like Scott constantly cite their experience running business as proof they know something about the industry they “worked” in. but Rick Scott, like Mitt Romney proves time and time again he knows very little about the world he lives in.