The Man Who Enjoys Really Cheap Government Health Insurance

[Howey]

Yeah, This guy: I'm beginning to dislike him more and more every day...

Last year, political neophyte Rick Scott spent $73 million of his own money to bring the tea party's anti-government, pro-privatization agenda to the Florida governor's office. Today, the former executive pays just $30 a month for health care—and lets taxpayers cover the rest.
 
The governor, a proud bearer of the Republican Party's deregulation standard, has spent his first half-year in office decrying government waste: He's laid off thousands of Sunshine State employees, slashed their benefits, turned down (most of) the federal government's health care dollars, and put extra financial pressure on Florida retirees and Medicaid recipients. But Scott and his dependents pay one-fifth what a janitor in the state Capitol pays for health insurance... and less than 3 percent of what a retired state trooper pays for life-saving coverage.
 
When asked about the double standard, a spokesman for Scott declined to comment, calling his family's cheap state coverage "private matters."

But the matter has huge implications for citizens of the state. Scott sits atop an upside-down benefits system that heavily subsidizes health care costs for the best-off state employees while forcing loyal rank-and-file workers to spend more of their shrinking paychecks for basic coverage. According to Gary Fineout, the longtime Tallahassee reporter who broke the story:
 

Scott is among nearly 32,000 people in state government who pay relatively low health insurance premiums. It's a perk that is available to high-ranking state officials, including those in top management at all state agencies. Nearly all 160 state legislators are also enrolled in the program that costs just $8.34 a month for individual coverage and $30 a month for family coverage.
 
Florida's elected politicians, judges, attorneys, prison wardens, department heads, and political staffers are members of the "special exempt service," whose cozy incomes are augmented by the extra health care subsidy. But most of Florida's 176,816 insured state employees (PDF) are members of the "career service," who pay (PDF) $50 a month to cover themselves, or $180 a month to cover their families.
 
That means a $32,000-a-year administrative assistant for the driver's license bureau pays $2,160 a year for herself and her dependents, or more than five times what Scott pays. (As of last month, Scott—who moved to Florida eight years ago—had a net worth of $103 million.)
 
State workers could have it worse, though. Retired Florida government employees—30-year veterans of the state's police force, or firefighters, for example—get no subsidy from Tallahassee to keep their coverage in the golden years. Instead, they pay $1243.34 a month, or nearly $15,000 a year, to stay insured. That's 41 times what Scott's health insurance costs.
 
So who pays to give Scott and his cronies their cut-rate coverage? Taxpayers do. It's not clear how many of the state's 32,000 top-ranking VIPs cover themselves, and how many get their entire families on the state plan. Depending on that breakdown, Floridians are paying between $1.3 and $4.8 million every month to extend this perk to their political elites. That could amount to as much as $57.6 million a year—12 times what the state spent on public broadcasting before Scott decided to defund the radio and TV stations, calling them "a special interest."
 
News of the governor's health care perk comes just as he's attempting to improve his image and boost his national profile. Last week, Scott revived a Democratic predecessor's tradition of spending an occasional day working alongside regular Floridians; his first foray, handling the counter of a Tampa doughnut shop, brought scads of protesters but generally positive coverage. Public approval of the governor rose to an anemic 35 percent last week—still better than his low of 29 percent in May, the worst of any governor in the nation. And Scott's also taken a leading role in supporting erstwhile GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry. ("I think he's in a nice position," Scott said of the hardline Texas governor.)
 
If Scott hopes to climb all the way out of the political cellar, though, he's going to have to explain why he favors government health care for his kin even though he's against it for everyone else. State Sen. Nan Rich, a Democrat, told Fineout that the governor is clearly "entitled" to his insurance subsidy, as far as the law is concerned. But, she added, "I wish every Floridian had the same opportunity."

Disregarding the obvious fact that Scott is a bald-headed fucking crook who doesn't give a rat's ass about the people of the State, I've mentioned on here many times the inequities between the administrators in State government and the underpaid, "lower class" workers.

Something needs to be done...

[ekg]

but you're overlooking the fact that he's already made his millions, so he is exempt from any of the little things that the real scourge of our society steals from 'real' workers. It's those firemen,teachers, and policemen who are the real problem. If it wasn't for their overinflated pensions and paychecks, then this story wouldn't even matter.  But since they have raped the system with their hand-outs, well it just makes Scott and friends look bad when they're really not the problem. Anyway, he's entitled to those perks because it's the law.. so he's really done nothing wrong here..


Scott, like all the 'do as I say,not as I do' Gov's are only living by the rules the liberals set up anyway.. and now the liberal media just wants to 'gotcha' them..

/sarcasm

to be real though, this only matters to 'thinking' people. The ones who voted for this guy don't care, he shouts the right buzz words (Obama's a socialist, Obama's a Marxist, Obama's a Muslim, Obama is killing this country) and that's all they care about. It doesn't matter what he or his brethren do, it only matters what they say..  everything they do is excused because it's what they say that matters the most.

seriously, you had allegedly well-read and  intelligent people like LilMike say 'hmmm, he's a crook.. and I know it.. but I'm going to vote for him anyway because I like what he has to say. Yeah, I know his actions don't live up to his words, but I really like his words so...' and stand in line to vote for this idjit... do you really think they give a shit about what this mook actually does? and how bad he has and will continue to fuck up this entire state?



BTW, Mike didn't really say that.. I don't know what his thoughts were other than he was going to/did vote for the guy... just clearing that up so he doesn't start whining about anything.

[Howey]

LilMike, like Shannon, will most likely not show his face here again. That's sad, in the case of Shannon. I thought he really wasn't like the others.

[Howey]

It's getting even worse for State employees, thanks to Ricky paying back political favors. What's funny (or not) is his proclamations against ObamaCare during the campaign that it would take away the patient's choice of a doctor.

Hello!

As he was gearing up to run for governor of Florida, Republican Rick Scott emerged as one of the most vocal opponents of what he and others began referring to as "Obamacare."
 
Scott created, chaired and bankrolled a group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights that spent millions of dollars on TV commercials attacking health care reform, especially a proposal calling for the federal government to create a public health insurance option to compete with private insurers.
 
In one ad, the narrator said the votes of a few key senators could determine whether or not Americans would be able to keep their own doctors and their own health insurance plans. The implication was clear -- people would lose the ability to choose their own doctors if health reform passed.
 
Trouble was, it wasn't true. The public option considered by the Senate at that time would have affected relatively few Americans--just three to four million, according to the Congressional Budget Office--and it would have negotiated rates with doctors exactly as private plans do. It would have been nothing more than an additional option for some people. It would not have reduced choice for anyone.
 
But to hear Scott and his group tell it, it would have led to the demise of choice and competition in health care.
 
Well, guess what. A few days ago, Scott, now governor of Florida, said he had decided to reduce choice and competition that state workers have enjoyed for years.

Florida state employees, who currently can choose among two or more competing HMOs, are being told that all but one of their HMO choices are being eliminated and that bureaucrats in Scott's Department of Management Services (DMS) have already decided which HMO they will be enrolled in come January 1, 2012.

The big winner of the four appears to be AvMed, which DMS selected as the sole HMO provider for 38 of Florida's 67 counties. UnitedHealth, which says it currently provides HMO coverage to 47,000 state workers in 66 of those 67 counties, appears to be the big loser. As you can imagine, it is not at all happy with the prospect of making less money off of Florida taxpayers. It filed a formal protest with the state a few days ago, claiming that, despite what DMS says, Florida taxpayers would have saved more money had the state allowed it to continue competing for state workers' business.
 
AvMed's big win has led to some raised eyebrows and suspicions. In a column headlined, "Rick Scott Lets His Pals Run a Monopoly on State Employees' Health Care Coverage," the Broward-Palm Beach New Times' Matthew Hendley wrote that AvMed "happened to be very friendly to Scott on the campaign trail."
 
Hendley noted that, as first reported by Health News Florida, Scott last year received $5,000 in campaign contributions "from people associated with AvMed" and that the company itself donated $10,000 to help pay for Scott's inauguration party earlier this year." Hendley says there are no records indicating that any UnitedHealth executive contributed to Scott's campaign.
 
Landing so much of the state's business could indeed be a windfall for AvMed, a relatively small Florida-based company that, according to its Web site, currently has only 320,000 people enrolled in its health plans, including state employees and their dependents. (UnitedHealth, on the other hand, has more than 30 million enrollees in Florida and elsewhere. It is the nation's biggest health insurer in terms of revenue and profits.)

Side note: When I worked for the state, I had AvMed until I got in the VA system. Terrible, terrible! High deductibles, never got to see a doctor (only a PA), most tests, etc., were disapproved, and meds were as expensive as paying outright.

When I worked in the business, billing AvMed was even worse. They either never paid (seriously, never!) or took up to two years or longer to pay.

Oh.

Wait.

Guess they really need the income!

Miami, FL: A class action filed in Florida seeks redress for AvMed Health Plans allowing millions of its customers' personal medical data to be compromised. AvMed acknowledged earlier that it left laptop computers, containing millions of its members' confidential medical records, unattended. These laptops were subsequently stolen and AvMed's members' personal records were compromised. The records contained AvMed members' names, home addresses, phone numbers, Social Security Numbers, as well as other highly sensitive medical history data such as diagnosis information, medical procedure and prescription information.

 Compounding the damage to its members, AvMed repeatedly underestimated the gravity of the theft and had to make subsequent admissions about the vast quantity of data stolen. Initially, AvMed contacted only 280,000 members to warn them of the dangers that accompanied the data loss. However, AvMed made numerous subsequent revisions and finally estimated that approximately 1.2 million of its members' private health records had been breached.

 A lawyer representing the plaintiffs says this is easily one of the largest medical record breaches in history, and the disastrous consequences may plague those affected for their lifetimes. Further, they believe that AvMed did not follow government-mandated HIPPA protocols. Merely taking the time to encrypt their laptops, likely would have obviated any harm done by this theft.