Tom Price: scandal-in-waiting?

It sure looks that way. Allow Crooks and Liars‘ Karoli Kuns to summarize:

In the dead of night, Republicans confirmed Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services. It’s appropriate that they confirmed Price under the cover of darkness, when most news organizations were asleep or on repeat loops for the night, because this confirmation is one of the most truly shameful of any of them.

Tom Price wants to gut Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA. He doesn’t believe that health care is a right. Instead, he believes health care is a profit center for greedy people.

Nevertheless, Rep. Tom Price, inside trader and profiteer on various private health care stock offerings, is our new Secretary of Health and Human Services, because Republicans do not care about ethics, but they are aching to gut Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA.

The New York Times adds some details:

Mr. Price has denied wrongdoing and said at a confirmation hearing, “Everything that I did was ethical, aboveboard, legal and transparent.”

But he recently amended his financial disclosure statement to report a higher value for his investment in a small Australian biotechnology company, and Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the senior Democrat on the Senate health committee, said his financial dealings raised serious questions about potential insider trading that ought to be investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“While Congressman Price served on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, he traded in health care stocks, pushed policies that helped his portfolio and got special access to a promising stock deal,” said Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the senior Democrat on the Finance Committee.

…
Some of the Democrats’ animus against Mr. Price stems from experience. Working with him over the last 12 years, they say, they have found him to be an effective advocate for conservative policies that they abhor.

“Buying and selling health care stocks as a member of Congress while you’re voting and helping those companies, that’s bad enough,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio. “But what he wants to do to maybe the greatest program in American history, Medicare, is much, much worse.”

So, yes: Price is likely yet another scandal-in-waiting tied to the administration of Donald Trump.

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.