We tend to forget that there is more than one important election happening. It is more than just Harris against Trump. We have many elections, Local, State, and Federal that will affect all of us. One of the biggest elections where I am living  is the Senate race of incumbent Republican Rick Scott and Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. There are many huge issues in Florida that I just don’t trust Republicans like Rick Scott to handle. We have a huge insurance issue. We have huge environmental issues. Florida has some of the highest inflation in the country.  We also have issues with healthcare. 

Healthcare should be a right. At least that is my opinion. I have seen there are some that believe healthcare should be based on Free Market principles. Think about that, what they mean is corporations getting rich off of other people's suffering. Free Market principles are buzz words that don’t mean what they used to mean. In many cases a real Free Market is beneficial for the consumer. A Free Market is supposed to spur competition which should be good for the consumer. Someone has to explain how Free Market principles apply to healthcare. Seven years ago this weekend I had a heart attack. My wife performed CPR on me until the EMTs showed up. Needless to say I was rushed to the hospital and wound up having open heart surgery. It was not like I could price check the procedure or try and get competitive bids or other things that are supposed to be staples of the Free Market System. I was dying and in no position to shop for estimates. I just think when it comes to healthcare in a lot of cases the Free Market just doesn’t work. 

We have a Senatorial  election this fall in Florida and Rick Scott is running for re-election. Rich Scott made himself very wealthy because of the Healthcare Industry. He at one time was the CEO of the single largest for profit healthcare company in the country, Columbia/HCA. In 1997 while he was CEO, Columbia/HCA was served search warrants by the FBI, the Internal Revenue, and the Department of Health, for Medicare Fraud. During his disposition Rich Scott pleaded the Fifth 75 times. Wasn’t it Donald Trump that said that only a guilty person pleads the Fifth. Rich Scott was pressured by the Board of Directors to resign but he did walk away with a nine million dollar settlement and left owning 350 million dollars of stock. Columbia/HAC wound up paying the largest fraud settlement in history. To me those facts alone should have made it impossible to run for any political office but he became the governor of Florida. Why? The company that he led committed Medicare Fraud and being the CEO he was ultimately responsible. A responsibility he walked away from. 

When Scott was Governor he opposed Medicare expansion after he was elected.  Then in 2013 when he was running for reelection he was in favor of Medicare expansion. After he won reelection he of course flipped again and stated that he was again against Medicare expansion. To me it looks like he was just a man willing to say anything to get elected and then going back on his word after the election was over. 

There are too many people who run for office who will say anything to get elected. As Gomer Pyle would say “surprise, surprise, surprise”. Sadly in some people’s opinion Scott  while he was Governor helped fuel the HIV epidemic by Florida returning 54 million in unspent federal HIV-prevention grants and blocking 16 million dollars in CDC grants to Miami-Dade and Broward counties. In 2017 Florida accounted for 13% of the country's new HIV cases which I believe was the highest in the nation. He really seems to me to put politics and money in front of the health of the people. In 2022 then Senator Rick Scott came up with a plan to sunset Social Security and Medicare. After considerable pressure In February of 2023 he took sunsetting those two programs off the table. Have we seen this flip flopping before from Scott? Remember how he was against Medicare expansion only to say he was for Medicare expansion so he could get elected only to flip back to opposing medicare expansion after the election. I don’t trust him not to do the same thing again. In fact I believe he will do the same thing. During his 2018 election he called his opponent  a socialist which sure sounds familiar. He also claimed his opponent had cut Medicare benefits which was fact checked to be false. That is a nice way to say it was a lie. Now in 2024 he again is calling his opponent a socialist which is his standby scare tactic. He is now also claiming he never wanted to cut Medicare but we too have seen that movie before. 

With retired people flocking to Florida just like I have, Healthcare is one of the number issues that I watch. I don’t understand why any retiree would not be concerned about healthcare and there is only one political party that wants to save and expand Medicare and that is the Democrats. They took money out of my check every week telling me that after I turned 65 I would have healthcare. Every Senior should look at the promises that have been made to us and vote for those that want to make sure that America keeps those promises. Of course that also applies to every State and every election. In Florida the Republican leadership has failed in the needs of the people.