Cracking the seal on Rick Scott healthcare lawsuits

At last, Florida newspapers are exploring the checkered history of the man most likely to be elected governor


By Joe Conason
Salon.com

As the Florida primary enters its final weeks, the business practices of Rick Scott, front-runner for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, are at last getting the attention they deserve. A wealthy investor in hospitals and clinics who became a leading antagonist of healthcare reform over the past two decades, the brash, bald Scott somehow escaped scrutiny of his controversial enterprises while he spent millions advertising himself as more "conservative" than Attorney General Bill McCollum.

Now the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times -- and the conservative website Newsmax! -- are reporting on a series of lawsuits against Scott’s chain of profit-making emergency clinics, operated by a company known as Solantic, including a case that involved accusations of fraudulent misuse of a medical license in violation of state law:

Just six days before Rick Scott announced his bid for governor, he was deposed in a case that alleged his health care company, Solantic, broke Florida law by filing false medical licensing information with the state.

But what Scott said April 7 might never become public.

(More here.)