Last week's Medicare Fraud Summit in Miami was reinforced by a record takedown of scam artists who were allegedly bilking the federal health-care program.

Bill McCollum's offensive against Rick Scott's well-publicized "mistakes" at Columbia/HCA is shining a light on McCollum's own health-care record in Congress.

Anyone who's been paying attention to the increasingly acrimonious Republican gubernatorial campaign knows by now that Scott was chairman and CEO of the HCA hospital chain when it was fined $1.7 billion by federal authorities.

Two Medicaid reform bills cleared a key legislative hurdle Monday, and a new research study gave them another push forward.

Building on pilot programs already under way in five Florida counties, the new bills would expand managed-care initiatives to Miami-Dade County next year and implement a statewide program over five years.

"Reform has increased competition among health plans, reduced co-pays and expanded and diversified patient benefits," according to Michael Bond, a senior fellow at the James Madison Institute in Tallahassee.