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Asshole of the Week - Rick Scott

This was one of those weeks that pulled back the proverbial curtain on a whole slew of assholes in government. David Cameron was off at his lavish Tuscan Villa when...

This was one of those weeks that pulled back the proverbial curtain on a whole slew of assholes in government. David Cameron was off at his lavish Tuscan Villa when London began to burn. The US started shedding cash faster than Nicolas Cage's real estate portfolio (mostly because our government is full of a bunch of bickering little bitches.) Rick Perry seemed to be everywhere, scaring the shit out of half the world as he flirted with a presidential run. But there was another Rick in Florida receiving far less fanfare who unceremoniously welcomed himself into the asshole club.

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Rick Scott is the governor of Florida. He's also worth $103 million, which would actually be a much larger number if he hadn't spent $73 million of that on his 2010 campaign—which he barely won. Fortunately, Scott has one less roadblock in the way of rebuilding that fortune, because he only pays $360 a year for his family's health insurance, or about $13, 410 less than the cost of an average American family's insurance premium. It's all part of a plan that offers Florida's state employees affordable healthcare. State workers can pay $150 a month, and the 160 legislators in the state can pay $30 a month if they wish to do so.

Maybe this isn't such a big deal, considering Scott "serves the public" and has actually rejected a yearly salary, but there's a major fucking conflict of interests in that Scott is a staunch opponent of Obama's healthcare plan. So, in essence, he hates the idea of giving the more than 50 million uninsured in this country an opportunity to obtain affordable healthcare through a government-subsidized program, but he himself benefits from that very same type of thinking.

To add to the insult, Florida has one of the highest uninsured rates in the country, a fact which Scott seems intent on not giving a fuck about. It's a pretty shitty deal for the Florida taxpayer, who foots most of the bill for Mr. Scott's coverage. Their dollars are being spent to reduce the healthcare costs of a multimillionaire, while a large portion of their state doesn't have any coverage at all.

But it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that Scott doesn't want people to have access to healthcare without having to pay significant amounts of dough for it. This would go against the basic principles that made Scott such a rich man in the first place. See, he made a lot of his money through for-profit healthcare, and was eventually ousted as CEO of a company that was busted for ripping off Medicare patients.

Some have argued that the outrage is bullshit. But those people are stupid. If you oppose providing coverage to people through government subsidies, you shouldn't turn around and use coverage that uses government subsidies. Pretty simple.

So, for the glaringly obvious hypocrisy, and for advocating and profiting off the suffering of other people, Rick Scott is this week's asshole.

ZACH PONTZ