Former hospital CEO Rick Scott's healthcare bills steer clear of hospitals [View all]

WASHINGTON -- Rick Scott is on a healthcare kick.

The Republican senator from Florida has introduced four bills in the last five months related to curbing healthcare costs, each accompanied by a press conference, TV appearances and op-eds in national media outlets.

On the surface, his proposals to lower prescription drug costs and eliminate surprise medical bills sound like such common-sense ideas that they could win bipartisan support. One of the bills, a plan to require drugs sold in the U.S. to match prices that are paid in Canada, sounds almost as though it might have been introduced by a left-leaning politician like Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But experts say Scott’s healthcare initiatives in the U.S. Senate actually aren’t much of a departure from his lifelong record as a hospital CEO — a lucrative career that funded two gubernatorial campaigns and a barrage of TV ads fueled by $63.5 million of his own money to flip a Senate seat in an election year that wasn’t good for Republicans nationwide.

“The way I look at it as a U.S. senator — and I was governor for eight years — is that I’m a fiduciary for the taxpayer,” Scott said in an interview last month, comparing himself to a type of trusted financial adviser who’s supposed to look out for investors. “I’ve spent my time when I ran a large hospital company trying to figure out how you get the cost of healthcare down. I started to do that as a governor and I’ve been up here for seven months.”

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