Health Care For America Now

I knew we were onto something when we called Rick Scott - disgraced hospital CEO, the Bernie Madoff of health care, lead liar fighting President Obama's health care plan - a shady character. He's a businessman of the shark variety, willing to rip off consumers and fellow investors without a care, and interested in any business deal that can make him more money.

According to new information from the Media Matters Action Network, from 2001 - 2006, Rick Scott helped run a company called CyberGuard. Sam Stein at the Huffington Post has the lowdown on this awful company:

Scott secured his board position in early 2006 after the company for which he previously worked — CyberGuard — was bought by Secure Computing for $295 million. According to Hoovers.com, Scott received $35,000 per year for serving on Secure Computing's board. He also received a half share of Secure stock and $2.73 for each CyberGuard share that was purchased. According to the company's website he remains in his Secure Computing post, though an SEC filing says he left in November 2008.

At the time of merger, Secure Computing was already facing criticism for allowing its SmartFilter software to be used by governments eager to limit public Internet access. As far back as 2001, Saudi Arabia had been using Secure Computing's content filtering technology to block access to certain websites. Often the prohibited sites were pornographic in nature. Occasionally, however, the censorship was of political, religious or culturally sensitive content.

Secure Computing's work for Saudi Arabia continued well into Scott's tenure on the board. In May 2007, the site OpenNet did a country profile that concluded that the Saudi Arabian government used "Secure Computing's SmartFilter software for technical implementation and to identify sites for blocking."

In November 2008, Business Week reported that Saudi Arabian Internet "censorship is considered among the most restrictive in the world." The government, the story went on, "uses more sophisticated software from San Jose-based Secure Computing that offers a menu of 90 categories of sites to block."

Perhaps more controversial was the use of Secure Computing's technology by the government of Iran. In 2005, OpenNet reported that "Internet content regulation in Iran" was occurring "at multiple levels, through multiple methods." The filtering, it added, was being enabled by "Secure Computing's SmartFilter software" and was blocking such sites as: www.lesbians-against-violence.com, www.gayegypt.com, www.gay.ru, and gaytoday.badpuppy.com.

Defrauding the government and pocketing taxpayer dollars, the biggest fraud settlement in American history, ripping off investors, and helping authoritarian regimes block free speech and internet access - all in a day's work for shady Mr. Scott. As Melinda Warner asks:

What about Rick Scott's past makes him qualified to speak about health care in America?  He defrauded Medicare, a government program meant to support the American population that has given the most to the country, and then proceeded to profit from the oppression of millions of humans in countries where people have few, if any, civil rights.

This is why Health Care for America Now is running ads pointing out Rick Scott's past:

It should be beyond clear that anything Rick Scott does is only for Rick Scott's interest. As Rachel Maddow says, he's a liar and a cheat. That's why he's trying to stop health care reform, because it will hurt his health services company and his health care and insurance industry friends.