Tom Price, President Trump’s choice for secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), has the distinction of being a better fit for the department he’s been picked to lead than any other Trump cabinet nominee. But this hasn’t helped Price gain Senate confirmation.
Price, 62, is an orthopedic surgeon. He ran an orthopedic clinic for 20 years in Atlanta before returning to Emory University, where he had finished his residency, as an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery. He also ran a clinic at Grady Memorial, Atlanta’s largest public hospital.
This background, while impressive, doesn’t necessarily qualify him to be HHS secretary. But his knowledge of the entire health care industry—doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, makers of medical devices, pharmaceutical companies—does. Price, by the way, is not an apologist for the pharmaceutical industry.
All this was of no interest to Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee at a confirmation hearing last week. They concentrated on portraying Price as a sleazy member of Congress—he has chaired the House Budget Committee—who invested suspiciously in medical and pharmaceutical stocks and created conflicts of interest.
This was the ostensible reason used by Democrats for treating Price harshly. The real reason was political and partisan. Price was nominated by President Trump. For Democrats, that’s poison enough. And he wants to repeal and replace Obamacare. Indeed, Price has his own substitute plan. It has 84 House co-sponsors, more than any other proposed Obamacare replacement.
Price was also roughed up when he appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee a few days before Trump’s inauguration. That committee doesn’t have a vote on his confirmation—only the Finance Committee does—but Price appeared anyway. He probably wishes he had stayed away, given what happened.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is a member of that committee and she’s an unhappy person. If Hillary Clinton had been elected, the Massachusetts Democrat would have been a powerful player, able to impose fierce new regulations on financial markets and banks. The day after Trump won, bank stocks soared, in part because she had been politically marginalized.
Warren took her ire out on Price. The issue was his purchase in 2016 of $2,700 of stock in Zimmer Biomet Holdings, a manufacturer of medical devices. A week after the transaction, he introduced a bill that would stall the implementation of a regulation by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that could hurt the company.
The bill went nowhere. But that wasn’t the point of Warren’s questioning. She was skeptical when Price insisted he wasn’t responsible for buying Zimmer stock. His financial manager, whom he had assigned to handle his portfolio, made the purchase. And he wasn’t aware of it until later, he said.
Warren wasn’t satisfied. His manager “buys and sells stocks you want to buy and sell,” she said. “That’s not true, senator,” Price responded.
“Well, because you decide not to tell them?” Warren said. “Wink, wink, nod, nod. And we’re all just supposed to believe that?”
Democrats failed to nail Price on the Zimmer deal. Nor did they on the purchase of stock in Australian drug-maker Innate Immunotherapeutics. He bought that on his own before it was publicly traded. But he claimed he had no information that wasn’t publicly available.
He was aided by Johnny Isakson, the chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee and a longtime friend. Isakson spoke on the Senate floor: “I feel like I have been asked to be a character witness in a felony trial in the sentencing phase of a conviction,” he said. “There are things that have been said the last week or so to me that need to be refuted.” He did his best to refute them.
Democrats didn’t give up at that point. They are resourceful. They tried a few other tactics. One was to slow the entire confirmation process for Trump’s nominees, not just Price. This allows more time for something to turn up that jeopardizes a nomination. Stranger things have happened.
In Price’s case, the vetting process, which includes a role for the Democrat-run Office of Government Ethics, took 35 days. The past two Democratic nominees for HHS secretary took half that time: 16 days for Kathleen Sebelius, 17 days for Sylvia Mathews Burwell. It’s not difficult to get the drift here.
Then there were attacks on Price’s health care plan. Democrats flinch at the thought of defending Obamacare because it’s falling apart and unpopular besides. So they went after the Price plan instead. At a White House meeting, Trump told House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi that she will love the replacement to Obamacare, which is likely to be similar to Price’s plan. Not likely.
This time, Pelosi thinks she knows what’s in a health care bill before it’s passed. “One of the proposals of the nominee for HHS, Mr. Price, was to give a $3,000 tax credit,” she said at a press conference. And she cited testimony before the Budget committee “that under his plan America’s families would be subjected to a $50,000 deductible, individual $25,000 deductible.” She wasn’t kidding.
Those deductibles are preposterous. The Price plan does offer two separate tax credits, one to buy insurance, another for health savings accounts (HSA). “Under Obamacare, the typical 36-year-old woman who makes $43,000 gets nothing,” says the Hudson Institute’s Jeffrey H. Anderson. “Under Price’s plan, she’d get a $2,100 tax cut and another $1,000 tax cut for having or opening an HSA.”
Brutal confirmations are nothing new. But Finance chairman Orrin Hatch said he’d never seen one as partisan as Price’s. He escaped, a bit bruised but alive. Price promises to sell all his stock within 90 days after he becomes HHS secretary. There were no Republican senators in sight who might vote against him. Which means his chances of confirmation are about as good as they get.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
