Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) is Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Health and Human Services; the cabinet department that oversees healthcare. He’s an orthopedic surgeon and a from-the-git-go opponent of Obamacare. He’s also invested heavily in the medical devices businesses and he’s also introduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives to protect those companies from government interference.
He faced tough grilling in his Senate confirmation hearing from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) on his stock purchases and possible insider trading.
Were this any average citizen, the Securities and Exchange Commission would want to have a word with him and his attorney, and were these normal times, he would be either rejected by the Senate or he would have the decency to withdraw his nomination.
But these are not normal times, and I fully expect him to be confirmed.
There’s a unified purpose behind all these nominees. Price doesn’t want government’s hands on anything remotely related to medical practice. He’d like to get rid of Medicare and Medicaid, too. He’d like us all to pay out of our own pockets and if there’s nothing but lint there, too bad for you and your kid with cancer. So he’s a natural to fill the position he’s been selected for and no doubt he’ll be confirmed.
As far as the GOP is concerned, the insider trading just means he’s smart, in a Trump sort of way.
These cabinet picks — and if you’ve seen any stories on the proposed budget, that as well — are right in line with the extreme right philosophy: Trump is going to turn the country into Kansas, where the government does nothing but funnel tax receipts into the right pockets. That’s how Trump has always done business, and now he has a Congress full of willing accomplices.