Rick Scott was born in Bloomington, Illinois, and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, where his father was a truck driver and his mother worked as a clerk at J.C. Penney, among other jobs. Scott graduated from high school in 1970, and then attended one year of community college after which he enlisted in the United States Navy. He was in the Navy for 29 months and served on the USS Glover as a radar technician. Scott later graduated from the University of Missouri–Kansas City with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and earned a law degree from Southern Methodist University.

In 1987 he helped found the Columbia Hospital Corporation with two business partners; this merged with Hospital Corporation of America in 1989 to form Columbia/HCA and eventually became the largest private for-profit health care company in the U.S. He was forced to resign as Chief Executive of Columbia/HCA in 1997 amid a scandal over the company's business and Medicare billing practices; the company ultimately admitted to fourteen felonies and agreed to pay the federal government over $600 million. Scott later became a venture capitalist, and entered into politics in 2010, when he announced his intention to run for Governor of Florida. Having defeated Bill McCollum in the Republican primary election, Scott defeated Democrat Alex Sink in a close race in the 2010 Florida gubernatorial election.