Trump regime sends Tom Price packing after disastrous tenure at Health & Human Services

Good rid­dance:

Tom Price, the health and human ser­vices sec­re­tary, resigned under pres­sure on Fri­day after rack­ing up at least $400,000 in trav­el bills for char­tered flights and under­min­ing [Don­ald] Trump’s promise to drain the swamp of a cor­rupt and enti­tled capital.

Already in trou­ble with Mr. Trump for months of unsuc­cess­ful efforts to repeal and replace Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s health care pro­gram [the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act], Mr. Price failed to defuse the president’s anger over his high-priced trav­el by agree­ing to pay a por­tion of the cost and express­ing “regret” for his actions.

The report that led to today’s Fri­day news dump appeared on Sep­tem­ber 19th, 2017 in Politi­co, authored by Dan Dia­mond and Rachana Prad­han:

In a sharp depar­ture from his pre­de­ces­sors, Health and Human Ser­vices Sec­re­tary Tom Price last week took pri­vate jets on five sep­a­rate flights for offi­cial busi­ness, at a cost of tens of thou­sands of dol­lars more than com­mer­cial travel.

The secretary’s five flights, which were sched­uled between Sept. 13 and Sept. 15, took him to a resort in Maine where he par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Q&A dis­cus­sion with a health care indus­try CEO, and to com­mu­ni­ty health cen­ters in New Hamp­shire and Penn­syl­va­nia, accord­ing to inter­nal HHS documents.

The trav­el by cor­po­rate-style jet comes at a time when oth­er mem­bers of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion are under fire for trav­el expen­di­tures, and breaks with the prac­tices of Oba­ma-era sec­re­taries Sylvia Math­ews Bur­well and Kath­leen Sebe­lius, who flew com­mer­cial­ly while in the con­ti­nen­tal Unit­ed States.

Price, a fre­quent crit­ic of fed­er­al spend­ing who has been devel­op­ing a plan for depart­men­twide cost sav­ings, declined to comment.

Since Politi­co’s report was pub­lished, Trump has open­ly sug­gest­ed on sev­er­al occa­sions that he might get rid of Price. Price’s depar­ture is offi­cial­ly being char­ac­ter­ized as a res­ig­na­tion, but the truth is he was forced out of the regime.

Price — who oppos­es LGBT rights, repro­duc­tive rights, and Medicare —  was tapped by Trump as his choice for the role last Novem­ber. He resigned from the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to join the cab­i­net, cre­at­ing a vacan­cy in GA-06.

Price’s tenure at the Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices was short… and dis­as­trous. As Sec­re­tary, rather than look­ing out for the well-being of the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, Price tried repeat­ed­ly to sab­o­tage the care that mil­lions depend on, includ­ing by plot­ting with his for­mer col­leagues in Con­gress to evis­cer­ate the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act. For­tu­nate­ly, on that front he failed.

Price also made erro­neous state­ments about med­ica­tion-assist­ed addic­tion treat­ments that had to be called out by doc­tors and sci­en­tists.

And then, of course, there were the the pricey char­tered flights.

“Even before his tax­pay­er-fund­ed lux­u­ry trav­el was dis­cov­ered, Sec­re­tary Price was an unac­cept­able choice for Sec­re­tary of Health and Human Ser­vices — not only giv­en the seri­ous, unan­swered ques­tions about improp­er finan­cial ben­e­fits stem­ming from his work in Con­gress, but also because of his ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dri­ven approach to health care and in par­tic­u­lar women’s health and repro­duc­tive rights,” said Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray in a state­ment pro­vid­ed to NPI.

“The fact that this deci­sion took this long only indi­cates the extent to which the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion allows its senior offi­cials to put them­selves, and par­ti­san pol­i­tics, ahead of fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties,” Mur­ray added.

“I hope Pres­i­dent Trump takes this oppor­tu­ni­ty to select a new Sec­re­tary of Health and Human Ser­vices who will tru­ly put patients and fam­i­lies first, and I look for­ward to a rig­or­ous and com­pre­hen­sive nom­i­na­tion process.”

U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal called for Price’s res­ig­na­tion in a let­ter sent last week with sev­er­al of her colleagues.

“You have rou­tine­ly made use of expen­sive pri­vate jets for offi­cial trav­el, bypass­ing cost-effec­tive alter­na­tives and wast­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of tax dol­lars,” not­ed Jaya­pal and her col­leagues Ruben Gal­lego of Ari­zona, Ted Lieu of Cal­i­for­nia, Jamie Raskin of Mary­land, and Bren­da Lawrence of Michi­gan, who are all Democrats.

“At a min­i­mum, the Amer­i­can peo­ple expect cab­i­net sec­re­taries to lead with integri­ty, accept account­abil­i­ty, and use pub­lic resources respon­si­bly,” the five mem­bers wrote. “In light of your breach of the pub­lic trust, we write to urge you to do the right thing and imme­di­ate­ly ten­der your resignation.”

Don­ald Trump pro­ceed­ed to make the same demand. And now Price is out. So no more Mis­ter Price Guy. HHS will need new a new chief­tain; let’s hope who­ev­er is nom­i­nat­ed by the regime is less extreme than Price was.