In a Feb. 22 column, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy praised Florida Gov. Rick Scott for agreeing to expand Medicaid in the state through the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, declaring it “a reasonable action for a conservative governor of the nation’s fourth most populous state.” Ruddy went on to state that “Scott joins a number of conservative governors who have opposed Obamacare but believe it would be a disservice to taxpayers not to accept federal funding.”
Ruddy went on to bolster Scott’s alleged bona fides on the issue:
Scott, former head of the huge Columbia/HCA hospital chain, was an outspoken critic of Obamacare even before he ran for governor.
In 2009, he founded Conservatives for Patients’ Rights to oppose Obamacare, and backed it with millions of dollars of his own money.
Then in April 2010, a month after Obama signed the healthcare bill into law, Scott announced his candidacy for governor, and he later told Newsmax that Obamacare would be “devastating for everybody.”
Ruddy failed to mention a significant thing Scott did while head of Columbia/HCA: oversaw “the largest ripoff of taxpayers in the history of Medicare and Medicaid.”
Who called it that? Newsmax. When Scott was running for the Republican nomination for Florida governor in 2010, a Newsmax article highlighted that the Miami Herald has reported that Scott resigned from Columbia/HCA in 1997 amid an FBI probe that ultimately led to the company paying a record $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines for Medicare fraud. The company pleaded guilty to 14 felonies, most committed during Scott’s tenure.
But then, that was when Newsmax supported Scott’s Republican opponent, Bill McCollum. After Scott won the Republican primary, Newsmax pulled an about-face and endorsed Scott for the general election against a Democratic opponent, flushing all that talk about his corruption down the memory hole.