Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Governor Richard Scott's opposition to pill mill legislation is ill-advised

St Augustine Record Letter: Scott needs to end pill mills

Editor: Florida Gov. Richard Scott thinks government regulations are "bad" for "business" and must be "slashed."

"Bad" for whose "business?"

Scott wants to repeal the Legislature's requirements for monitoring "pill mills," designed to halt oxycodone prescription drug deaths. Why?

A ripple of death and misery flows from Florida "pill mills." Seven Floridians die daily from oxycodone, including babies born addicted. Florida fills 75 percent of America's oxycodone prescriptions, mostly to out-of-state drug dealers.

Florida's Republican Attorney General Pamela Bondi has appointed former Democratic State Sen. David Aronberg to be our AG's special counsel, to shut down the pill mills.

Aronberg reports that there are more than twice as many pill mills as McDonald's restaurants in Broward County. Aronberg says that "you know it's a pill mill if" the alleged "medical clinic" is located between a tattoo parlor and a pawn shop; brandishes armed security guards and guard dogs; provides pills to a long line of people in cars with out-of-state license plates; takes only cash (not health insurance or credit cards); and is unadorned by a single tongue depressor.

As our late U.S. Attorney General Robert Francis Kennedy said, "Government belongs wherever there are people in distress who cannot help themselves or wherever evil needs an adversary."

But rather than fight organized oxycodone addiction, Scott errantly supposes our Florida legislators were "picking on business" -- organized criminals selling oxycodone painkillers.

Scott's Columbia/HCA HMO paid $1.7 billion for Medicare/Medicaid fraud. Scott purchased our governor's office with $78 million of his own money. Scott's done nothing for average Floridians. Scott lacks transparency and sensitivity to needs of our people.

Scott worships anti-regulatory ideology -- in Lincoln's words, "idolatry that practices human sacrifice."

Scott must execute faithfully the laws that he swore to uphold. Please get with the program, Governor!

posted by Ed Slavin @ 7:33 AM

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