Twitch streamer Hasan Piker suspended after saying Republicans would 'kill Rick Scott' if they really cared about Medicare fraud

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Rick Scott is a former governor of Florida and current senator from the state.

HasanAbi
(Image credit: HasanAbi)

Twitch streamer Hasan Piker has been banned, again, apparently for suggesting that if the Republican Party was serious about combating Medicare fraud, they would "kill Rick Scott," the former governor of Florida who now sits as a Republican senator.

The statement came during a stream in which Hasan was reacting to an interview with US House Speaker Mike Johnson, who said the US government, presumably through Elon Musk's DOGE agency, is going to investigate social security, medicare and medicaid, and "carve out the fraud, waste, and abuse, and find efficiencies."

"They're not tackling providers, they're not actually going after false billing. They are trying to cut recipients. [Fraud] is not happening at the point of recipient. If you cared about Medicare fraud, or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott. You wouldn't make Rick Scott—former governor of Florida Rick Scott—you wouldn't make him ... a prominent part of the Republican party.

It's definitely not the most well-considered choice of words, but Piker justified his point—put more temperately, that Scott is more responsible for Medicare fraud than its end users—by noting that Scott's healthcare company Columbia/HCA was fined a total of more than $1.7 billion following, as Scott's now-defunct website (which you can still see via the Wayback Machine) put it, an "investigation into Columbia/HCA’s Medicare billing" while he was CEO.

Twitch doesn't comment on the reasons for individual account suspensions so I can't say for certain that Piker was suspended for the Rick Scott statement, but it seems pretty likely, particularly given the firestorm of controversy his remark generated on X—amplified by existing criticism of his vocal support for Palestine.

Piker himself suggested the Rick Scott comment was the cause for the suspension, although he was not exactly contrite about it.

"I'm sorry!" Piker wrote following the suspension. "I'll choose my words carefully next time and say 'if Mike Johnson cares abt Medicare fraud (since he wants to cut 800m from Medicaid/Medicare) he’d call for MAX PUNISHMENT for current FL GOP senator/former gov Rick Scott—who has done the most medicare fraud in us history!"

How long Piker will be suspended from Twitch remains to be seen, but this isn't his first such rodeo: According to StreamerBans, this is his fifth suspension, the longest previous suspension lasting for seven days.

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Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

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