Hospital That Handcuffed Gay Man Owned By Bain Capital, Was Run By Gov. Rick Scott

Research Medical Center is the hospital that had Roger Gorley, a gay man who was visiting his husband, Allen Mansell, handcuffed and arrested despite his having legal medical power of attorney and thus every right to be by his bedside. Located in Kansas City, Missouri, Research Medical Center is owned by HCA Healthcare, which is owned HCA Holdings, Inc., the largest private operator of hospitals and healthcare facilities in the world.

It’s currently worth an estimated $17 billion.

And HCA’s largest shareholder is Bain Capital, LLC, the company former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney co-founded and headed.

HCA is also the company that Rick Scott, current governor of Florida, was forced to resign from — because of Medicare fraud.

Last year, John Hudson at The Atlantic Wire reported that “HCA’s biggest shareholder is Bain Capital LLC, the company once led and co-founded by Mitt Romney. And this isn’t some tiny asset: HCA own 160 hospitals and 110 surgery centers. As of April, Bain held 20 percent of HCA’s outstanding shares, an amount Bloomberg’s Alex Nussbaum says is worth $2.2 billion, and just last year, Bain and KKR & Co. took the company public in an IPO that raised $3.79 billion.”

Hudson adds:

HCA has attracted government scrutiny of its business practices. After a stellar growth period in the 1970s and 1980s, the firm ran into trouble in the late 1990s for stretching the legal limits of pursuing profits. In 1997, Rick Scott resigned as chairman and CEO and so did his top lieutenant David Vandewater under pressure from the Feds who were investigating into whether HCA “engaged in practices such as fraudulently overstating their expenses to increase their compensation from Medicare, and regularly conducting unnecessary blood tests,”as The New York Times‘ Kurt Eichenwald reported in 1997. But that was just the beginning. In 2003, the Justice Department announced a settlement with HCA in what was the largest health care fraud case in U.S. history: The company coughed up $631 million in civil penalties and damages related to government allegations of Medicare fraud. At the time, the DOJ issued a litany of offenses dating back to the late 1980s, all of which amounted to the recovery of $1.7 billion from HCA.

What does all this have to do with denying a same-sex couple their rights?

Well, on the one hand, nothing.

But in the other hand, let’s remember that just last year, Mitt Romney said that allowing same-sex couples to visit each other in the hospital is a benefit — not a civil right — and he would let states take away that “benefit” if they want to.

And back in 2004, Romney told a group of LGBT parents, “I didn’t know you had families,” after they had spent half an hour i his office explaining what it’s like to raise a family without the benefit of marriage.

 

For more background and just-in news:

Hospital That Handcuffed Gay Man Visiting Husband Issues Statement Accidentally Showing Wrongdoing

HCA Employee Uses Shocking Anti-Gay Slur To Defend Missouri Hospital That Handcuffed Gay Man

Hospital Handcuffs And Removes Gay Man Visiting His Partner

6 Petitions That Send A Strong Message To Missouri Hospital: Do Not Discriminate Against Gay Couples

Was Gay Man The Victim Of Police Brutality In Missouri Hospital Arrest?

 

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