Florida’s tea party Republican Gov. Rick Scott has made a point to flaunt the wealth that landed him in office (instead of jail).
One of his first, likely illegal, moves was to sell the state plane that transported his predecessors while on state business. Why? Because Scott didn’t need the taxpayers’ jet, he has his own helicopter and access to his friends’ Lear Jets.
Equally played up was Scott’s decision not to accept a salary. After all, he made so many millions out of defrauding the government on padded Medicare billing in his businesses that he doesn’t need the piddly $130,000 that me and my fellow residents could provide him. Heck, Scott spent $76 million of his “own” money just to buy the office.
But there are some things that even Rick Scott needs help with. Scott, who focused his campaign and every FOX News appearance he’s ever made, on getting rid of the Affordable Healthcare Act which would provide health insurance to millions of uninsured Americans – and Floridians – is accepting our help to pay for his health insurance.
We do not begrudge our millionaire governor his dirt-cheap, taxpayer-subsidized health care coverage.
We just wish that the millions of Floridians who have no coverage at all — and who help pay for Gov. Rick Scott’s dirt-cheap health insurance — could get the same deal.
But they can’t because Florida politicians like Rick Scott are doing everything in their power to fight “socialized” medicine.
They are suing to keep “Obamacare” out of Florida. They are rejecting millions of federal health care dollars that could help the poor and disabled. They are cutting indigent care funding.
Meanwhile, Scott will be paying about $360 annually out of pocket to provide coverage for both himself and his wife. That means the bill for the two of them will be about $30 per month. Why so cheap?
He is among 32,000 select state employees who pay very little out of pocket — as little as $8.34 a month — because the taxpayers cover their costs.
And that’s just the upper echelon employees.
“For all 176,000 state workers with government health care, Floridians spend $1.8 billion in health care costs,” The St. Petersburg Times reported this week. “That amounts to roughly $137 per year spent by every employed taxpayer over the age of 18.”
Scott has marshaled his communications team and annexed members of the larger Republican Party for Florida in an editorial letter-writing and robocalling blitz to help him makeover his image and boost his poll numbers, which are the lowest ever recorded for a governor. You would think that at least one of these folks might have cautioned him about how accepting taxpayer provided health care would resonate.
Then again, maybe they did. Scott listens to no one and his ideological blinders leave him at a huge disadvantage when it comes to logical thought processes.
For example, Scott was wrong in the first part of this statement criticizing his interpretation of the ACA, which unfortunately, does not provide “government run health care.”:
“I clearly believe government run health care will be bad for you as a patient.
But in providing coverage for him, and for his wife, he was right.
It’ll be bad for you as a taxpayer.”
TALLAHASSEE Florida already leads a lawsuit challenging the federal health care law but state officials are going a step further and ignoring the law almost entirely rejecting millions of federal dollars to provide health care for retirees seniors children and people with disabilities. Rick Scott and the Republican-led Legislature have returned or refused to spend at least 19 million in federal money associated with implementing the health care law. Scott also has stopped any state planning for the creation of mandated health care exchanges which will allow consumers to comparison shop for health insurance plans.
Unfortunately, Florida seems addicted to fraudsters and scumbags in public office, and then complain about how corrupt government is. We have p.RickScott, Vern Buchanan, Marco Rubio, Alan West – part of it is the media here and the other part is the crooked election system. One of Jeb Bush’s poison pills was making the county Supervisor of Election post in to a political one rather than professional, so the voters have little oversight since they now report to rethuglican election committees, and they get to re-elect themselves. And the Dems can’t be bothered to push to fix it.
Sarastro34, Vern Buchanan is a beautiful example. But as far as the SOEs go, it must vary by county. Here, we still elect ours by county-wide vote.
Like I have always said those with the bucks rule people it’s about time you realize this fact!!!!They get the cake and you get the crumbs and the crumbs are very scarce indeed!!!!