Trump’s Pick for Health Secretary Is Total Nightmare Fuel

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Tom Price to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), placing the Georgia Congressman in an extremely powerful position as far as the nation’s health is concerned. Given his dubious track record, this appointment is of serious concern. 

As HHS secretary, Tom Price, 62, will serve as the country’s health czar, overseeing healthcare, food safety, drug prices, access to abortions, and biomedical research. He’ll manage of number of critically important federal agencies, including the National Institutes for Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This cabinet-level pick—which still requires Senate approval—makes Price the most powerful person in US health policy.

As a former orthopedic surgeon, and as someone with extensive public policy and budget experience, Price is reasonably well equipped to handle the position. Trouble is, his fiscally-paranoid and socially-conservative views threaten to set the US back years.

While chair of the House Budget Committee, Price demonstrated his commitment to limited government and lowering spending. He has ties to the House Tea Party caucus, and has unabashedly condemned the “vile liberal agenda that is threatening everything we hold dear as Americans.” Gay rights groups say he’s “completely unfit” to serve as health secretary (he’s opposed to gay marriage), and he holds a zero percent rating at Planned Parenthood (for reasons we’ll get to in just a bit).

One of the first items on Price’s agenda will be to dismantle Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA), of which he’s a vociferous critic. In fact, Price took it upon himself to propose his own legislation—a plan known as the Empowering Patients First Act—to repeal and replace the ACA. This plan later formed the basis for a subsequent proposal, the Patient’s Choice Act (PCA), which was introduced by House speaker Paul Ryan last June. Unlike the ACA, which expands Medicaid, the PCA would restrict Medicaid to low-income disabled people, moving the rest of its beneficiaries to private insurance.

Price says that “patients and doctors should be in control of health care,” claiming that under the ACA “people have coverage, but they don’t have care.” The Congressman’s primary gripe with the ACA is that he thinks it interferes with the doctor-patient relationship. The trouble is that if patients can’t afford healthcare, there is no relationship to interfere with. As a former doctor, it appears that Price’s concerns lie more with the medical practitioners and ensuring their security than with the patients themselves. With Price now at the helm, it’s not clear if Ryan’s plan will be submitted as is, or if Price will now commit to an overhaul of the PCA. Given Trump’s backtracking after the election, it’s not even clear if the ACA will be dismantled as promised, or simply reformed.