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Scrushy may become an oft-used adjective to describe a self-centered, unprincipled person who shouldn't be trusted. Although we've seen too many such characters emerge from the corporate woodwork over the past two years, the HealthSouth founder and former CEO certainly appears to be a worthy namesake for the entire group.
However, this week's announcement that Congress will launch an investigation into the HealthSouth scandal brings full circle a downfall that stemmed from congressionally-sponsored regulatory excesses at the expense of taxpayers.
There would be no HealthSouth today if the government hadn't been paying hospitals and health-care facilities excessive fees in the 1980s and early 1990s. This flow of cash from taxpayers' pockets into the pockets of the owners of these facilities fueled the building of the HealthSouth empire and hooked its leader, Richard Scrushy, on the addictive lifestyle of the rich and famous. By 1997, HealthSouth's net income exceeded $300 million, with 37% of its revenues coming from Medicare.
According to BusinessWeek, Scrushy rode this wave of "success" to build personal net wealth of $300 million, a collection of luxury homes, a squadron of corporate jets, and an ostentatious corporate headquarters, complete with a history museum depicting HealthSouth's - and Scrushy's - rise to prominence.
As the Bible warns us in 1 Timothy 6:10: the love of money is the root of all evil. And Scrushy had come to love money.
In 1997, Congress wised up and dramatically cut the Medicaid payments on which Scrushy had built his lavish lifestyle. By that time, he was hooked.
The Bible describes what happens to men like this in Romans 1: "Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator... And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them."
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Justice Department have accused Scrushy of fraudulently inflating profits by at least $1.4 billion starting in 1999. Ten former executives have already pled guilty to related charges and are helping build the case against their former employer. One of those executives has identified an additional $1.1 billion in fraud, starting in 1997 - the same year that Congress shut off Scrushy's cash pipeline.
Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal, Scrushy's third and current wife, former beauty queen Leslie Scrushy, alternates between sitting beside her husband in the courtroom, holding a Bible in her hands, and running off to Biloxi casinos to attend pajama parties featuring her own line of sleepwear. Perhaps if she and her husband had heeded the warnings in that book in her hands rather than gambling their eternal lives away among the party crowd, Scrushy may have just been another little-noticed, but honestly successful God-honoring businessman.
We may never know the extent of evil that stemmed from Richard Scrushy's love of money, but we can be sure that it was our Congress' enthusiasm for taking our money and giving it to companies like HealthSouth that sparked it all. Now, Congress wants to spend more of our money on a probe to get to the root of this evil.
God help us all.
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