A Rick Scott Story Part II – How Political Giving and Getting is Done

Since shortly after Rick Scott was sworn in as governor in 2011, he and the Republican Party of Florida have raked in nearly $1.2 million in contributions from companies owned or controlled by Dr. Daniel Dosoretz, the ambitious founder and former chief executive of giant 21^st Century Oncology.

State election records show that many of those contributions appear to have been timed to influence the award of a billion dollar state Medicaid contract by the Scott administration’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) in 2014.  If so, they worked.

Prestige Health Choice LLC, another company in which Dosoretz had a substantial financial stake, was one of more than a dozen bidders when AHCA solicited proposals in late December 2012 from health plans seeking to provide managed medical assistance (MMA) services for Medicaid enrollees in Region 11 – Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. AHCA said the MMA procurement “may be the largest procurement in Florida government.”

While AHCA’s award was pending in 2013, more than a dozen Dosoretz companies, including Fort Myers-based 21^st Century Oncology, its lobbyists and Dosoretz business partner Dr. Howard Sheridan, contributed $191,500 to Let’s Get to Work, the “independent” political action committee funding Gov. Scott’s 2014 re-election effort. That was atop $141,000 that Dosoretz’s companies gave to Let’s Get to Work and the Republican Party of Florida in 2011-2012 before AHCA’s Invitation to Negotiate.