A Bitter Pill To Swallow

Florida's Governor Galtie, Rick Scott, is at it again.  His crusade to prove that the business of the Florida state government is to do nothing extends to killing efforts to fight prescription drug abuse.

Gov. Rick Scott wants to eliminate a computer system aimed at curbing the illegal sale of prescription drugs at storefront pain clinics, a move that alarmed narcotics investigators, drug-treatment advocates and some lawmakers.

Just two years ago, state legislators approved the creation of a prescription drug monitoring program that would allow doctors to review the drug purchases of their patients, to prevent patients from seeking narcotics from multiple doctors -- a practice known as “doctor shopping.”

The Legislature approved the measure in response to an explosion of storefront pain clinics across South Florida, making the region the main supplier of black-market pills across Appalachia and the East Coast.

Now the governor wants to erase the database before it even gets off the ground. A proposed bill included in the budget package the governor unveiled on Monday would eliminate the database -- even though it won’t be financed with state money.

The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the proposal.

The prescription database costs nothing in the state budget because lawmakers earmarked no funding for the program when they approved it in 2009. State officials must pay for the database with federal grants and private donations. The database is expected to cost about $1.2 million to assemble, and $500,000 a year to maintain.

The governor also wants to eliminate the Office of Drug Control, the office charged with raising the private money for the database. Scott dismissed the head of that office, Bruce Grant, last month.

Gosh, what happened to Republicans being the law and order party?  It's not the money issue, the state wont pay a dime for the database.  But all of this makes perfect sense if you remember that Rick Scott made his billions as president of a Florida hospital chain that made tons of money off of Medicare fraud.

Ricky there knows exactly the kind of people that this database would potentially embarrass:  doctors, big pharma executives, hospital administrators, and those who can afford refilling old prescriptions to "give them a boost" through the day or night.  The last thing Rick Scott wants is a database full of white-collar criminals that might be tracked back to Rick Scott's hospital fraud days.

So yes, without explanation, Scott has axed the head of the department that would create the database and is moving to dismantle the database itself.  But you don't need to hear the explanation from Scott to know what's going on here.  The health care industry wants this thing gone, and Rick Scott does too.

Rick Scott is covering his own ass, and he doesn't care how many Floridian lives that might have been saved by this database.  Law and order doesn't apply to people like Rick Scott.  Silly Florida voters.