If not for his spectacular ouster amid the nation's largest Medicare fraud investigation, Scott's rise from public housing to CEO of the nation's largest hospital chain would have made him a quintessential modern American success story. In 1997, Scott was forced out of the Columbia/HCA hospital chain he built, because of federal investigations that ultimately resulted in the company paying more than $2 billion in fines. But politics now is giving him the opportunity to write his own next chapter. When Scott takes office Tuesday amid two days of partying, speeches and parades financed by more than $2.5 million from lobbyists and corporate givers, he will inherit the tattered state economy he spent the past nine months blaming on Tallahassee ?insiders.?
