Health Care for America Now, a liberal advocacy group, hopes to use the health care background of Conservatives for Patients' Rights founder Rick Scott against him. Scott, a a founder and former CEO of Columbia/Hospital Corporation of America, has been bankrolling a multi-million-dollar advertising campaign against government-sponsored expansion of health care coverage.

Today, HCAN announced it would be running television ads in Washington and Scott's home town of Naples, Fla., spotlighting Columbia/HCA's $1.7 billion settlement in a fraud case in the late 1990s and Scott's ouster by the company's board. The group says the personal attack on Scott is warranted because he is underwriting the campaign with money made by defrauding the government and the public" and has made himself the face of the opposition to reform. See press release here.

                                                                                                              -- Julie Kosterlitz