Weekend Open Thread

Welcome to your weekend open thread. Is this the last weekend of winter? I certainly hope so. Heard we could actually get snow tomorrow.

Florida Governor Rick Scott is one of the brazen new teabagger governors elected in 2010. Just how brazen? He’s now proposing a new Medicaid scheme that directly helps his own family.

Republican governor Rick Scott’s push to privatize Medicaid in Florida is highly controversial—not least because the health care business Scott handed over to his wife when he took office could reap a major profit if the legislation becomes law.

Scott and Florida Republicans are currently trying to enact a sweeping Medicaid reform bill that would give HMOs and other private health care companies unprecedented control over the government health care program for the poor. Among the companies that stand to benefit from the bill is Solantic, a chain of urgent-care clinics aimed at providing emergency services to walk-in customers. The Florida governor founded Solantic in 2001, only a few years after he resigned as the CEO of hospital giant Columbia/HCA amid a massive Medicare fraud scandal. In January, he transferred his $62 million stake in Solantic to his wife, Ann Scott, a homemaker involved in various charitable organizations.

Florida Democrats and independent legal experts say this handover hardly absolves Scott of a major conflict of interest. As part of a federally approved pilot program that began in 2005, certain Medicaid patients in Florida were allowed to start using their Medicaid dollars at private clinics like Solantic. The Medicaid bill that Scott is now pushing would expand the pilot privatization program to the entire state of Florida, offering Solantic a huge new business opportunity.

That’s right, his own family stands to make a fortune from this. In private business you would be fired for this type of ethical behavior. Amazing!

In Canada, the government of Steven Harper has fallen. It’s one of the quirks of the parliamentary system.

CORNWALL — The federal government fell in a vote of nonconfidence on Friday, setting the stage for a spring election.

The final vote on the Liberal motion declaring the Commons had lost confidence in this government was 156 for and 145 against.

“A government that breaks the rules and conceals the facts from the Canadian people does not deserve to remain in office,” Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff told the Commons as he introduced the motion.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to visit the governor general at Rideau Hall in Ottawa at approximately 9 a.m. Saturday morning to officially have the election called.

Voting day is expected to be May 2.

One thing that’s unusual about this is that Harper is likely to win again, this time with an outright majority.