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CPR's Rick Scott twists in the wind as he tries to explain how he as the CEO of HCA had no idea his former company was participating in the practice of upcoding, where they defrauded the Medicare system for more than a decade and were forced to pay a $1.7 billion fine, the highest in U.S. history.

SANCHEZ: It sure looks to me like he's pointing his finger right at you. Do you think he is?

SCOTT: I think he was.

SANCHEZ: Yes, yes. Do you -- do you take credit -- I was just having a conversation with Eric Boehlert and they said, look, this guy has got this Web site. In fact, I'll show it to the viewers again. There's your Web site right there. We'll take it all the way to the very top. People can see it. It's CPR, Conservatives for Patients' Rights.

And there, you tell people where they can go, to these town-hall meetings. You tell them what they can do. You show them videos of what's been done so far.

Some people have used the word "orchestrated." I'm not sure what word you would use. But do you take credit for making sure this is going on? SCOTT: It would be nice to, right? But -- because I believe that people ought to show up to these meetings. They ought to be nicer about it. But they ought to show up to these meetings and tell them what they think.

I think they ought to show up whatever side you're on. You ought to let people know. I mean, we're going through a significant debate about what ought to happen in health care. Show up and tell them what you think.

SANCHEZ: But -- but you're -- but -- but let's be fair about this. You're not trying to get everybody to go. You're trying to gin up the people who are going to be on your side. I mean, you've got a lot to gain from this, don't you?

SCOTT: Well, I believe -- I clearly believe that government-run health care will be bad for you as a patient. It will be bad for you as a taxpayer. It will be bad for our country. But most importantly, bad for you as a patient.

Now, would I rather people show up that care about the debate on -- the way I believe? Absolutely. But when I'm on radio -- I'm on a lot of talk radio. I say show up, read the bill.

SANCHEZ: But you know, let's talk about this, though. I mean, the accusation that the White House was essentially making, one that you haven't challenged yet to my knowledge. Maybe you will here now.

Columbia Hospital Corporation, which you founded...

SCOTT: Absolutely.

SANCHEZ: ... which later became HCA, which made you, from my understanding, incredibly wealthy, was charged with defrauding the government for more than a decade and had to pay a record fine of $1.7 billion.

I mean, some would argue, and it would be hard to say they're wrong, that you would be the poster child for everything that's wrong with the greed that has hurt our current health-care system. People would ask, why should they listen to you?

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Rachel Maddow examines how one former disgraced Bush official, Thomas Scully is influencing the health care debate.

MADDOW: During the Bush years, there were quite a few administration officials who were forced to leave their jobs under dark clouds. There was Claude Allen, for example, President Bush's domestic policy adviser who left after shoplifting a whole bunch of stuff from Target.

There was Bush's aides czar, Randall Tobias, famous for telling foreign countries they couldn't get any American money to fight AIDS unless they cracked down on hookers. Mr. Tobias resigned, of course, after his name turned up on the client list of the D.C. madame.

There was David Safivian, the head of procurement at the White House, who was busted in the Jack Abramoff scandal. There was Steven Griles, number two guy at Interior Department who was also busted in the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Actually, if I keep listing how many Bush administration officials were busted in the Abramoff scandal, we're going to be here a long time. But suffice to say, there were a lot of dark clouds over a lot of Bush administration resignations. One of them was President Bush's administrator of Medicare, a man named Thomas Scully.

Mr. Scully's career in government took a turn for the infamous after he ordered another government official to withhold information from Congress. That information was: how much President Bush's Medicare prescription drug benefit would cost. Publicly, the Bush administration was saying it would cost no more than $400 billion. Privately, they knew it was more like $600 billion. But Thomas Scully made sure that Congress never knew that.

A Bush administration investigation found that Mr. Scully threatened to fire the actuary who came up with the real cost figures if that actuary gave those real cost numbers to Congress. And while he was doing that, Mr. Scully was also busy getting himself a special waiver that would allow him to get a job as a health industry lobbyist as soon as he left government.

So, think about this for a second. He helped that prescription bill get passed by hiding its true costs, then he immediately went to work for companies who stood to make a mint from the fact that he got that bill passed. It's nice work, if you can get it, right?

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Rachel Maddow reports on the man who has been described by Chris Hayes as Healthcare Enemy No. 1, Rick Scott and why the Republicans may be sorry they've allowed him to be the face of opposition to health care reform. As Hayes reports:

Rush Limbaugh offers Democrats an irresistible target as the de facto leader of the Republican Party, but for my money, Rick Scott is the man who best embodies the spirit of the current conservative opposition. The name may not exactly be a household word, or it may ring a faint bell, but Politico recently reported that the millionaire Republican would be heading up Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR), a new group that plans to spend around $20 million to kill President Obama's efforts at healthcare reform.

Having Scott lead the charge against healthcare reform is like tapping Bernie Madoff to campaign against tighter securities regulation. You see, the for-profit hospital chain Scott helped found--the one he ran and built his entire reputation on--was discovered to be in the habit of defrauding the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is the man who will be delivering what Politico called the "pro-free-market message."

You can read more about Scott in his article at The Nation.

From the AFL/CIO Blog Health Care Reform Opponent Outed: Scott a Hospital CEO With Shady Past:

The former CEO of Columbia/Hospital Corporation of America who was forced to resign in 1997 amid fraud charges, as well as the group that launched the infamous “Swift Boat” attack on the 2004 presidential bid of Sen. John Kerry, are now trying to sink health care reform.

But Health Care for America NOW! (HCAN), which supports health care reform, last week launched a television ad (left) detailing the “dubious past in the health care industry” of anti-health care reform front man Rick Scott.

According HCAN, after Scott was forced to resign from the health care giant in the wake of fraud charges, Columbia/HCA agreed to pay $1.7 billion in fines and penalties—the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history.

Says HCAN in a statement:

The hospital corporation pleaded guilty to a litany of criminal and civil charges including lying to the government about how sick patients were so they could collect larger fees.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported this morning that Scott is using $5 million of his own money, plus another $15 million from donors he refuses to name, to finance the “swift boating” of President Obama’s health care reform initiatives. The Post reports that PRC Public Relations, the group that slimed Kerry’s Vietnam War record, is coordinating the campaign.

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From the Politico:

The Conservative Patients' Rights Action Fund -- the first group out of the box opposing Obama's healthcare plan -- has launched a second round of its campaign on the issue, a source involved in the group says.

The campaign focuses on Obama's proposal to set $634 billion in the federal budget aside for healthcare reform, and links the issue to the Congress's treatment of bonuses for AIG executives.

“Isn’t it amazing folks in Congress were shocked the plan THEY passed allowed those huge bonuses for AIG?" asks Rick Scott, the former healthcare executive who chairs the group, in a new television ad to be released tomorrow. "Now some in Congress want to raise taxes and spend $634 billion for the President’s healthcare overhaul - - WITHOUT even seeing all the details of his plan. They just never seem to learn."

Ah, yes, Rick Scott. Funny, the details the Politico leaves out of their stories! From Christopher Hayes in The Nation:

Having Scott lead the charge against healthcare reform is like tapping Bernie Madoff to campaign against tighter securities regulation. You see, the for-profit hospital chain Scott helped found--the one he ran and built his entire reputation on--was discovered to be in the habit of defrauding the government out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is the man who will be delivering what Politico called the "pro-free-market message."

A Texas lawyer who shared a business partner with George W. Bush, Scott started his health company, Columbia Hospital Corporation, in 1987. Its growth was meteoric, expanding from just a few hospitals to more than 1,000 facilities in thirty-eight states and three other countries in 1997. As his firm gobbled up chains, like the Frist family's Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), it became the largest for-profit hospital chain in the country. By 1994, Columbia/HCA was one of the forty largest corporations in America, and Scott had acquired a reputation as the Gordon Gecko of the healthcare world. "Whose patients are you stealing?" he would ask employees at his newly acquired hospitals.

He promised to put nonprofit hospitals--which he insisted on referring to as "nontaxpaying" hospitals--out of business and touted his company's single-minded pursuit of profit as a model for the nation's entire healthcare system. "What's happening in Washington is not healthcare reform," he told the New York Times in 1994. "Healthcare reform is happening in the marketplace."

The press portrayed Scott as a guru to be admired and feared, "a private capitalist dictator," in the words of one Princeton health economist. "Probably the lowest body fat of anybody I've been in business with," his partner told the Times.

"Other hospitals were intimidated," recalls John Schilling, who worked for Columbia/HCA in the 1990s. Scott was "like the bully that would come into town and if you didn't sell to him or partner with him, he would open up shop across the street from you and put you out of business."

Not long after joining the company in 1993 as the supervisor of reimbursement for the Fort Myers, Florida, office, Schilling noticed things weren't quite kosher. "They were looking for ways to maximize reimbursement...which ultimately would improve the bottom line."

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