Keep it Simple and Stupid: Rick Scott's Healthcare Plan and the FMA

“Florida is not a physician-friendly state to practice medicine because of the high cost of medical liability insurance and excessive lawsuits,....the FMA PAC supports Rick Scott for Governor because he shares our goal of increasing access to quality health care for all of Florida’s citizens. Rick Scott is not afraid of taking on personal injury lawyers and shaking up the status quo in order to get things done for the people of Florida.”


President of the FMA PAC, Dr. Madelyn Butler



I tried to understand Rick Scott's healthcare plan and ideas, which convinced the Florida Medical Association Political Action Committee to endorse him as Gubernatorial Candidate.
First, I searched on his web site and found the following:

* On Abortion: "I believe that abortion is wrong and Roe versus Wade should be overturned."
o What shall I tell a woman who is pregnant but unmarried, unemployed, on food stamps and lives with friends or relatives?
o Teenagers who were raped or married women who were sexually attacked by their husbands?
o Should government tell women and doctors what to do and how to lives their lives?
* On Health Care:
o "As a businessman, I know I am held accountable for results, and I held the people in my company accountable for results, too. Delivering quality care at a lower cost to patients was a top priority when I ran Columbia/HCA, and when I started Solantic urgent care facilities here in Florida....In the 1990’s, we were able to transform the hospital industry and prove that free market health care can deliver high quality care at a lower cost to patients."
+ That’s it? We just have to emulate the Columbia/HCA model and open a couple of Solantic Urgent Care centers and we solve all healthcare problems? Guess, I can shred all my healthcare economics test books and magazines, join Rick Scott's model and everything will be just fine. How naive or stupid can anyone be to believe that? Obviously, the FMA PAC does!
o "Rick believes that our health care system should focus on choice, competition, accountability and personal responsibility."
+ So I will have the choice of choosing between an unaffordable health insurance policy or none?
+ Accountability and personal responsibility only applies to the consumers of healthcare but not Rick Scott who just made " some mistakes in his life."

o "Most recently, Rick led the fight to defeat President Obama’s government-run public option. As the founder of Conservatives for Patients’ Rights (CPR), an advocacy group dedicated to the free market principles of choice, competition, accountability and personal responsibility in health care, he was instrumental in defeating the public option plan that would have led to socialized medicine."
+ Fear mongering and painting the government as the boogeyman trying to enslave citizens is a silly and dangerous tactic which just reveals that Rick Scott and friends have no other arguments to offer to resolve the critical problem facing us today and in the near future: how to provide affordable healthcare for an aging population suffering from chronic diseases that consume already 75% of all health care spending.
* On healthcare management experience:
o " I’ve made mistakes in my life...I learned very hard lessons from what happened and those lessons have helped me become a better businessman and leader."
+ That’s it! Mistakes imply taking personal responsibility and not blaming others (i.e. Columbia/HCA) for it. These are the lessons he brings to the table and those character traits make him the knight in shining armor for the FMA PAC?


So what can I say about the FMA PAC decision to endorse Rick Scott? A sad day for Florida's doctors. A sad day for medicine.

Yours

Bernd