Republican Senator Rick Scott Walked Away From a $1.7 Billion Health Care Fraud Case. Then He Got a Senate Seat.
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Republican Senator Rick Scott Walked Away From a $1.7 Billion Health Care Fraud Case. Then He Got a Senate Seat.
Mitch Jackson<br>May 11, 2026
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Senator Rick Scott built a fortune running the company that committed the largest health care fraud in American history at the time, then walked away with roughly ten million dollars in cash, three hundred million dollars in stock, and a cushy consulting deal while his company pleaded guilty to fourteen felonies and paid one point seven billion dollars in fines. He pleaded the Fifth seventy five times under oath, never faced a single criminal charge, and now he sits in the United States Senate writing health care policy and lecturing the country about Medicare fraud. Here’s what you need to know.
Rick Scott sits in the United States Senate today because the federal government decided his company would take the fall and he would take the money.<br>Read that again. The company pleaded guilty to fourteen felonies. The company paid $1.7B in fines, then the largest health care fraud recovery in American history. Rick Scott collected a roughly ten million dollar cash severance package, kept ten million shares of stock then valued at around three hundred million dollars, and walked into a five-year consulting contract worth almost a million dollars a year.<br>He has never been charged with a crime. He has never been convicted of anything. And in a 2000 civil deposition, he invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 75 separate times.<br>This is the man currently lecturing the country about Medicare fraud.<br>The Raid
March 19, 1997. Federal agents from the FBI, the IRS, and the Department of Health and Human Services served search warrants at Columbia HCA facilities in El Paso and on dozens of doctors with suspected ties to the company. The raid did not happen because some bureaucrat got bored. It happened because whistleblowers inside the company had been telling federal investigators for years that something was deeply wrong with how Columbia HCA billed the United States government. Over thirty whistleblowers filed complaints against the company in the 1990s.<br>Eight days after that first raid, Rick Scott signed his last SEC report as a hospital executive.<br>The federal pressure kept building. On July 16, 1997, the FBI executed search warrants at eighteen Columbia hospitals and fifteen other locations across six states. Nine days after that second wave, the board of directors forced Scott out. He resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of the company he had built.<br>The board did not throw him out empty handed. Public reporting and the company’s own SEC filings show his exit package included roughly $10M in cash, 10M shares of company stock then worth approximately $300M, two years of paid office and secretarial expenses, and a five-year consulting deal worth about $950K per year. Thomas F. Frist Jr. replaced him as chairman and CEO. Rick Scott took his money home.<br>The board knew. The annual reports to shareholders had been warning for years that the financial incentives Columbia HCA offered doctors could run afoul of the federal anti-kickback law, the same law passed specifically to limit conflicts of interest in Medicare and Medicaid. The board kept paying out anyway. The board kept the scheme running anyway. When the federal government finally knocked on the door, the board paid the founder to leave and called it a day.<br>What The Company Admitted
In settlements reached in 2000 and continuing through 2003, Columbia HCA pleaded guilty to 14 felonies. The company admitted, in writing, in federal court, to the following.<br>Systematically overcharging the government by claiming marketing costs as reimbursable expenses.
Striking illegal deals with home care agencies.
Filing false data about the use of hospital space.
Fraudulently billing Medicare and other federal health programs by inflating the seriousness of patient diagnoses. That practice has a clinical name in fraud investigations. It is called upcoding. Sicker patients generate bigger reimbursements. Columbia HCA made patients look sicker on paper than they were in the bed.
Giving doctors partnerships in company hospitals as a kickback for referring patients to HCA.
Filing false cost reports.
Fraudulently billing Medicare for home health care workers.
Paying kickbacks in the sale of home health agencies.
Paying kickbacks directly to doctors for patient referrals.
Giving doctors loans that were never intended to be repaid. Giving them free rent. Giving them free office furniture. Giving them free drugs from hospital pharmacies.
That is not a list of allegations. That is a list of admissions. The company said yes, we did all of this, please let us pay the fine and move on.<br>The Numbers Tell The Story
In December 2000, HCA...