Republicans get anti-Scott letter from ‘attorney general’
by Michael C. Bender | July 25th, 2010Republican Bill McCollum has sent Florida GOP voters this five-page letter that includes a watermark that appears to come from his attorney general’s office. Of course, it isn’t the official office letterhead. That would violate state election law.
McCollum tears into Scott in the start of the letters, referring to $1.7 billion in Medicare fraud his former hospital company paid and saying “his hands are filthy.”
“Rick Scott’s behavior borders on criminal,” said McCollum, state government’s top attorney.
McCollum waits until end of the second page to imply that Scott is his primary rival. McCollum doesn’t explicitly say he’s running for governor until more than halfway through the letter, which is dated June 28.
The McCollum campaign says the letter was a part of this package that included a reply card with McCollum’s campaign disclosure.
Tags: Bill McCollum, Republicans, Rick Scott
Where's the money? Use The Post's interactive database of who wants and who's getting federal dollars.
Use these interactive graphics to find and contact Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast legislators.
July 25th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
They are both Republicon dirtbags. Florida is full of these simple-minded republicons.
It’s time to put the Democrats back in charge of Florida.
July 25th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
Bill McCollum’s attacks on rival Rick Scott clash with his record in Congress
By Marc Caputo, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
In Print: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 Bill McCollum’s campaign for governor recently began bashing his Republican rival for heading a hospital company that paid a record $1.7 billion fraud fine for bilking Medicare and Medicaid.
But McCollum seemed to have a different perspective 12 years ago when he was a congressman and pushed legislation that, critics said, would have “gutted” a federal whistleblower act and was designed to halt federal investigations of hospitals — namely Columbia/HCA, which was run at one point by his new political rival, Rick Scott.
Speaking at the time, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said the “McCollum bill is not designed to stop the prosecution of innocent mistakes. Rather, it would make fraud easier to accomplish more often. And it would establish new ‘look-the-other-way’ loopholes, including for ongoing cases such as Columbia/HCA.”
McCollum called Grassley’s comments political “hogwash,” saying his bill was an innocuous way to stop overzealous federal prosecutors from “blackmailing” hospitals and punishing them for simple errors.
“In our zeal to crack down on health care fraud and abuse, we must be careful not to throw our nets so wide that we ensnare honest providers who are making inadvertent billing mistakes,” McCollum said March 19, 1998, when he introduced his Health Care Claims Guidance Act in the U.S. House of Representatives.
By making whistleblower cases harder to file, McCollum’s legislation could have cost taxpayers $6.3 billion over a decade because it encouraged fraud and allowed for more Medicare and Medicaid overbilling from health companies, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Though McCollum’s bill ultimately failed, it now lives on as a prime example of how his numerous votes and quotes in 20 years in Congress can haunt him on the Florida gubernatorial campaign trail.
During the federal investigation of Columbia/HCA, from 1997 to 2000, McCollum never said a negative word publicly about the hospital chain or Rick Scott, according to the Congressional Record and news databases.
Sparked by whistleblower complaints, the investigation into Columbia/HCA ultimately forced the company to agree to a settlement with the federal government. The company admitted a variety of transgressions, from submitting false reimbursement claims to billing the government on behalf of patients who didn’t qualify for services.
Before and after the settlement, McCollum was only quoted as defending hospitals under investigation. Months after McCollum filed the whistleblower legislation, he received $3,000 in congressional campaign contributions in a single day from Columbia/HCA executives, according to published reports and the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog group.
Today, as the state’s attorney general, McCollum fashions himself as a Medicaid fraud fighter. And he has made Scott and Columbia/HCA into a poster child of fraud.
Over the weekend, the campaign posted two press releases with the headlines “Rick Scott Linked to Healthcare ‘Fraud’ ” and “Fraud Files: Rick Scott Oversees Massive Taxpayer Fraud, Now Misleads Florida Voters.”
“Rick Scott not only oversaw fraud, Rick Scott is a fraud,” the campaign said in one statement.
Scott, who was never charged or deposed as part of the federal investigation, was forced from his leadership role by the company’s board months after the inquiry became public in 1997.
Almost as soon as Scott entered the race this spring, McCollum’s campaign began sending talking points to surrogates mentioning Scott’s rocky tenure of Columbia/HCA.
Scott’s spokeswoman, Jen Baker, said Scott wanted to fight the investigation, but the board wanted to settle. Baker said Columbia/HCA wasn’t the only hospital targeted by federal investigators. It was the most high-profile, however, because it was the largest private chain. The company controlled 340 hospitals, 135 surgery centers and 550 home health locations in 37 states.
With so many hospitals facing investigations during the Clinton administration, the American Hospital Association, which received major backing from Columbia/HCA, fought back in Congress with the legislation that McCollum helped sponsor.
“Bill McCollum’s inconvenient truth is that he strenuously defended HCA against the Clinton witch hunt until he saw an opportunity to score cheap political points,” Baker said. “What a shock … career politician Bill McCollum is a hypocrite.”
At its height, 212 co-sponsors signed on to McCollum’s bill, including then-Rep. Karen Thurman, now the Florida Democratic Party chairwoman.
Noting the bipartisan support, McCollum spokeswoman Kristy Campbell said McCollum’s legislation at least led federal prosecutors to stop hounding health providers for technical violations.
“This was a huge waste of federal prosecutorial resources chasing people with no intent of committing fraud — which is not the case of Columbia HCA under Rick Scott,” Campbell said.
Though McCollum described the legislation as a way to protect health care providers from unfair prosecutions, it also made big changes to the False Claims Act, which was originally passed during the Civil War to stop fraud.
July 25th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Why does McCollum employ such black propaganda against his rival-to-be? It is disgusting to do that when he has not officially announced his intention for running in the election. I think the people should know by now who is worth voting for.
July 25th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
The funny thing about the Republican Party hacks is that the day after the Primary they will be bent over bowing at Scott’s feet.
July 26th, 2010 at 12:34 am
Isn’t this a comment section and not a place to write a book? Where are the PB Post police when you need them? Bill McCollum has ALWAYS stood up for the people of Florida and there’s not one shred of proof that he has ever done otherwise. I’ll vote this lifetime public servant into office any day over sheister Scott and his dirty millions.
July 26th, 2010 at 6:45 am
Kate says – When you have a career politician that has left a streak of 30 years of orgainzed corruption, deal after deal for friends like Mori Hosseini on the Stanaki land deal in Volusia county and Penny Pritzner he help steal for pennies on the dollar the Orlando naval training center which has ultimately cost we taxpayers millions in cleanup fees. McCollum lies when he says his intergity has never been questioned! He never had any integrity! He’s always been able to use his authority to suppress and cover up his culture of corruption through media control and political power! the people know him for what he is! That’s what’s important! It’s the year of flush the corrupt career politicians and he’s going out at the polls on August 24th like other crooked congressmen are!
July 26th, 2010 at 7:17 am
Below are the past and present terms in the Senate, House, and White House held by Bill McCollum:
When Role Representing
1981-1992 U.S. Representative Florida’s 5th
(was preceeded by Richard Kelly)
1993-2000 U.S. Representative Florida’s 8th
(was preceeded by Rep. Bill Young [R-FL10])
Sponsorship Analysis
Higher numbers mean other Members of Congress tend to cosponsor McCollum’s bills, while lower numbers mean McCollum tends to cosponsor others’ bills. This shows McCollum’s percentile rank among Members of Congress.
McCollum is somewhere between a leader and a follower.
McCollum sponsors others’ bills and other Members of Congress cosponsor McCollum’s bills. For more, see congressional statistics. To compute the leader-follower score for McCollum, we make a table that lists all other Members of Congress. Each row has the number bills sponsored by McCollum and cosponsored by the other Member of Congress divided by the number of bills sponsored by the other Member of Congress and cosponsored by McCollum.
This is a measure of who is following who. The higher the number, the more times others are cosponsoring McCollum’s bills without McCollum returning the favor. We then take the mean of (the logorithms of) these ratios. Thanks to Joe Barillari for the idea.
Voting Record
Bill McCollum missed 751 (7%) of 10,600 roll call votes between Jan 5, 1981 and Dec 15, 2000. The graph to the left shows the number of missed votes over time. Click for a larger chart and a list of recent votes.
Bill Sponsorship & Cosponsorship
Bill McCollum has sponsored 206 bills between Jan 6, 1987. and Oct 26, 2000 of which 156 haven’t made it out of committee and 19 were successfully enacted. McCollum has co-sponsored 1,152 bills during the same time period. (The count of enacted bills considers only bills actually sponsored by McCollum and companion bills identified by CRS that were themselves enacted, but not if they were incorporated into other bills, as that information is not readily available.)
July 26th, 2010 at 9:05 am
Phyllis:
You are on crack! While I’m no fan of most Republicans myself, voting blindly for a Democrat is laughable! The party you think represents you DOESN’T EXIST!!
Progressives have dominated democrats for 50 years. So, you wouldn’t have been in favor of the Civil Rights Act? (Rep). You support a completely socialist USA? (Dem). Increasing the National Debt without limits, or spending cuts? (Dem-Rep?
We need fiscal conservatives, not “Democrats” or “Republicans” to fix the problems. You’ve been wrong about “your” party your whole life!
July 26th, 2010 at 10:37 am
Kate (post #5) –
You made my point for me with the term “lifetime public servant”. Thirty years is TOO LONG out of the private sector. McCollum has lost touch with your average voter, he is a party politician with WAY too many obligations and favors to repay to his “lifetime” supporters. Thank-you for your service, Bill. Time to go home.
July 26th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Hmmm… so all McCollum can accuse Scott of doing is being CEO of a company that got fined (i.e. shaken down) by the Federal Government. Where’s the charge/evidence of malicious intent? Where’s the details of what it is that Scott actually did? Let’s see… the Mayo Clinic was also fined by the government at the time for Medicare issues. What about their CEO at the time–was he intent on defrauding the government and taxpayers?
Anybody who looks into this issue immediately can see that it is irrelevant to Scott’s qualifications to be governor.
July 26th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
And Rick Scott is “in touch” with your average voter? How laughable, Ed Fulop. Rick Scott has no more qualifications to be governor than Obama did to be President nor is he in touch with anything except his own bottom line. It’s amazing to me that billions of dollars in fraud is treated so lightly by those looking for a fresh face. If Scott “didn’t know” his company was stealing from the taxpayers, it doesn’t get more “out of touch” than that. And, if he did, which is the more likely scenario, he’s corrupt and unfit to lead this state.
July 26th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
Kate –
Qualifications for Florida Governor:
30 years old, resident of state for 7 years, and be registered to vote. Oh, yeah, and he/she has to win an election by a majority of the vote. Seems to me he’s “qualified”. Do you know any prosecutors? I’ve met two in my life, and neither were very keen on NOT charging someone with a crime when the evidence showed that they were guilty. As John (poster #10) says above, many health care companies were fined at that same time that HCA/Columbia was. It was payback from the Clinton machine for the “killing” of HillaryCare in 1993-4, and the board offered Scott up for mercy from the Feds. They served him up on a platter, and yet he STILL wasn’t charged, so what does that tell you? It wasn’t about justice, it was about bloodying the nose of someone that kicked them in the groin.