Consumer Watchdog – The Rush Limbaugh of health care hires oil industry hit man

Gene Randall's name popped out of the news reports about a 30-minute fake-news infomercial savaging health reform that aired on the NBC station in Washington yesterday. A disgraced billionaire paid for it and hired former CNN correspondent Randall, the "reporter" who also hosted a 30-minute hit piece for Chevron, exonerating its deadly pollution in the Amazon. Both videos copy the style of "60 Minutes."

Randall and his paymaster, Rick Scott, are a fine pair. Scott ran a health care empire that gobbled up community hospitals in the 1980s, closed many of them and turned the rest into profit centers. His Columbia-HCA chain spent years defrauding Medicare and Medicaid of billions and paid a $1.7 billion fine. Scott "resigned" and walked away with a fortune. Now Scott, rehabilitated by his own money, is the four-star general of opposition to federal health reform and sole proprieter of the fake grassroots "Conservatives for Patient Rights."

Scott must have seen what Randall did in his expensively produced 30-minute video for Chevron, meant to counter a real 60 Minutes report on the lawsuit against Chevron in Ecuador, where predecessor company Texaco left behind a toxic stew in the rainforest. Randall is also producing faux-news "interviews" with Scott. These are aimed at falsely persuading Americans that President Obama wants socialist health care and that will maim or kill us all, and that Rick Scott knows how to do health care right.

Here's a clip from the infomercial (screen shot at left) with Randall doing voice-over on Scott's glowing record as CEO of a giant health care chain.

Here's a sampling of Scott's real record, from the fact-check watchdogs at Media Matters:

Scott's Columbia/HCA Pled Guilty To Defrauding Medicare And Paid A $1.7 Billion Fine

Columbia/HCA Investigated For Medicare Fraud.  According to the New York Times: "Officials at a number of Federal agencies began investigating whether Columbia hospitals engaged in practices such as fraudulently overstating their expenses to increase their compensation from Medicare, and regularly conducting unnecessary blood tests. Last week, law enforcement agents raided Columbia offices and hospitals in seven states, seizing documents related to business practices." [New York Times, 7/26/97]

Evidence Collected In Columbia/HCA Investigation Included Documents "Stamped With Warnings That They Should Not Be Disclosed To Medicare Auditors."  According to the New York Times: "The government began a civil investigation and obtained critical evidence: second sets of cost reports and worksheets maintained at HCA hospitals that contained significantly lower expenses than in reports submitted to the government. Some of those documents were stamped with warnings that they should not be disclosed to Medicare auditors." [New York Times, 12/18/02]

Columbia/HCA "Hospitals Were Knowingly Inflating The Numbers Reported To The Government." The New York Times reported: "In particular, these people said, investigators are examining accusations of significant differences between the cost reports submitted by certain Columbia hospitals to the Government and separate reports -- known as reserve cost reports -- that were kept at hospitals. Investigators were said to believe that these second reports, along with work sheets prepared by analysts working with the company, provided evidence that at least some hospitals were knowingly inflating the numbers reported to the Government in the cost report to improperly raise total compensation." [New York Times, 7/17/97, emphasis added]

Columbia/HCA Marked Employee Social Function Expenses As Patient Care Costs In Reports.  According to the New York Times: "A 1993 report by the General Accounting Office found that Hospital Corporation of America -- the company that accounts for the 'HCA' in Columbia's name -- improperly included expenses for employee picnics, Christmas gifts and food for nonemployees at social functions as expenditures related to patient care in the cost report for its headquarters." [New York Times, 7/17/97]

Columbia/HCA Healthcare Pled Guilty To Fraud Charges Following Seven-Year And Multi-State Investigation.  According to Forbes.com: "Yesterday, the nation's largest hospital chain, known until recently as Columbia/HCA Healthcare, pleaded guilty to a variety of fraud charges. It admitted to bilking various government programs and agreed to pay a total of $840 million in fines and penalties. The fraud settlement is the largest in U.S. history, breaking the old record held by Drexel Burnham...The guilty plea follows a seven-year federal investigation that resulted in charges being filed in five different federal courts in Florida, Texas, Georgia and Tennessee, where HCA is headquartered. The fraud revealed by that investigation ran deep within HCA's way of doing business." [Forbes.com, 12/15/00, emphasis added]

One especially interesting nugget in this litany is the next-to-last, that HCA's employee parties and food were booked as "patient care" expenses. HMOs and the for-profit insurance industry insist today that simply requiring HMOs and insurers to spend a certain percentage on patient care will fix the bloated administrative overhead of insurance companies. As Rick Scott's old empire shows, that's just an invitation to let the redefinition of "patient care" begin.

Insurance companies and other for-profit chunks of our broken health care system are, like Rick Scott and his enabler Gene Randall, trying to rewrite their histories and fix their images. Thanks to the fact-checkers toiling in the archives, there's at least a chance they won't get away with it.