Florida gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott (R) bills himself as a political outsider, but when it comes to answering questions about his questionable stewardship of Columbia/HCA — a for-profit hospital chain that paid a record $1.7 billion in fines for massively defrauding the Medicare program during the 1990s — Scott has one of the most polished and rehearsed answers in the business.

The Wonk Room examined three different interviews with Scott on CNN’s John King Tonight (8/26), CNN’s American Morning (8/27), and FNC’s America Live (8/28), and noticed that Scott gave an identical, formulaic 5-part reply when questioned about his business record:

1. Notes that his primary opponent, Florida AG Bill McCollum, already attacked him for his record and he lost.

2. Mentions that he invested his life savings — $125,000 — in Columbia/HCA.

3. Recites the company’s achievements: high patient satisfaction, expanded company with 285,000 employees.

4. Then, when pressed on the fraud, he explains that business people make mistakes and that he’s taken responsibility for his.

5. Conversely, Politicians never take responsibility. He has and he will as governor.

Watch a compilation:

There may be ways for journalists to avoid listening to Scott’s polished recitations. For instance, Scott should be asked:

1. You’ve said that you want to do for hospitals “what McDonald’s has done in the food business” and “what Wal-Mart has done in the retail business?” Do you still believe this?

2. You’ve said, “Where do we draw the line? Is any fast-food restaurant obligated to feed everyone who shows up?” Do you believe hospitals should treat everyone who shows up?

3. After you were ousted by the HCA/Columbia board, you received “a $9.88 million severance package, along with 10 million shares of stock worth up to $300 million at the time.” Given that you’re now admitting to mistakes, do you think you deserved so much money?

4. You say you’ve taken responsibility, but then why did you invoke your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 75 times during a 2000 deposition about your time as head of Columbia/HCA?

5. Since you’re running for governor on your admittedly less than stellar business record and asking people to trust that you’ve learned from your past mistakes, why don’t you release the deposition you gave on behalf of Solantic, a chain of urgent care clinics that have been accused of unsavory business practices?

Insurers became the target of the White House’s attacks in the closing days of the health reform debate and so perhaps it’s no surprise that they’re “backing Republicans with campaign donations by an 8-to- 1 margin, favoring the party that’s promised to repeal President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul if it wins back Congress.” Bloomberg’s Drew Armstrong has the scoop:

WellPoint, along with Coventry Health Care Inc. and Humana Inc., gave Republican candidates $315,000 from May through July, according to U.S. Federal Election Commission records. That compares with $41,000 given to Democrats by the three companies as the parties near November elections that will determine who controls the U.S. House and Senate next year.

While Republicans aren’t likely to win the large majorities necessary to override a presidential veto and repeal the health law Obama signed in March, they may be able to slow or stall its implementation, said James Morone, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. At the same time, the turn to strongly favor Republicans may anger Democrats who had been receptive to insurers’ concerns, he said.

Recall that after initially coming to the table and supporting Obama’s efforts, insurers turned against reform, even after the public option had been taken off the table. They criticized the weak individual mandate and argued that the bill would lead to higher premiums for average Americans.

Since passage of the law, the administration and the President have reached out to insurers, inviting them to meetings with Obama and HHS Secretary Sebelius and weighing their concerns about the forthcoming regulations and the implementation process. But through it all, issuers — while nominally agreeing to assist the administration with implementation — have understood which party has its interests in mind. Issuers have watched as Democrats — led, most recently by the six Democratic Committee chairman with jurisdiction over health care — argued that insurers should have to abide by a strict interpretation of the law and spend 80 to 85% of premium dollars on health care and contrasted that approach to the likes of conservatives like Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who have gone to the mat to weaken the regulations.

Therefore, this donation imbalance shouldn’t be interpreted as an industry endorsement of the GOP’s repeal efforts or its attack on the individual mandate — which could make the industry millions. The industry is turning to the Republican party not so that it could repeal the entire law — that seems highly unlikely — but so that it can push for favorable regulations that don’t cut into industry profits. The want to ensure that Republicans hold their line, like they always have.

Sarah Palin’s appearance in Jacksonville, Florida may have been bumped to a smaller venue due to slow ticket sales, but that didn’t stop the Mama Grizzly from taking her shots against the health care law and Governor Charlie Crist for vetoing a piece of anti-abortion legislation:

In a speech that only ventured into politics on abortion issues, Palin criticized Obama’s health care overhaul as a plan that will lead to more abortions.
“The biggest advance of the abortion industry in America is the passage of Obamacare,” Palin said. “Elective abortions have nothing to do with health care. It’s about ending lives, not saving lives.”

Of course, anyone even remotely attune to the actual dynamics of the health care debate knows that the so-called “abortion industry” — by which I presume Palin means pro-choice activists who advocate on behalf of doctors who perform abortions — was quite disappointed with the law and the rash of anti-abortion activity in the states that followed its passage.

To refresh, health plans may offer abortion coverage in the exchanges, but only if their customers write two checks – one for the share of their premium that’s allocated for abortion services and one for all other health care coverage – even though both checks would come from the customers’ private funds, not from government coffers. The Nelson deal also included language that encourages states to pass their own version of the Stupak Amendment, which some have, thereby completely eliminating abortion coverage from the exchanges.

Pro-choice advocates saw the Nelson firewall requirement as an “unprecedented” restriction on “private insurance coverage for abortion care, making it much more cumbersome for insurers to offer coverage and for consumers to obtain it.” In the time since the law passed, moreover, conservative state lawmakers have gone even farther, using the law’s opt-out language as an opportunity to severely restrict women’s ability to purchase abortion services with private dollars and the administration has prohibited states from covering abortion in the high risk insurance pools. If that’s the “biggest advance” for the abortion “industry,” the the Gulf spill was the biggest advance for the oil industry.

Earlier this month, a judge in Virginia ruled that the state’s lawsuit challenging the individual mandate in the new health care law should proceed partly because the state’s recently enacted ‘Virginia Health Care Freedom Act’ — which protects Virginia citizens from the individual requirement — conflicts with the federal requirement and “therefore encroaches on the sovereignty of the Commonwealth and offends the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.”

The lawsuit names HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as the defendant, but now in an interesting wrinkle, Sebelius says Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli “got the list of defendants wrong.” In her response to the Judge’s ruling:

Deny, and separately aver that while the defendant, Kathleen Sebelius, in her official capacity as the Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, is responsible for administering many provisions of the ACA, the Secretary of the Treasury is primarily responsible for the administration of the minimum coverage provision that the plaintiff seeks to challenge in this action. [...]

The complaint should be dismissed for failure to join a necessary party, namely the Secretary of the Treasury, who, unlike the defendant, is charged with the implementation of Section 1501 of the ACA.

Cuccinelli may be able to amend his complaint and add the necessary party, but this could also force the judge to make a finding that the mandate is administered by the Treasury Department, which itself would undermine Cuccinelli’s claim that the mandate is not a tax.

The reply also argues that Congress has the authority to impose a minimum coverage provision — also known as the individual mandate –since it’s “essential to ensure the success of the ACA’s larger regulation of the interstate health insurance market.”

Significantly, Florida’s challenge mentions Sebelius, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis as defendants.