Trump's Health Secretary Pick Favors the Rich, Not the Sick, Experts Argue

The Georgia Republican congressman nominated to head the Health and Human Services Department next year under a new Trump administration would repeal the Obamacare and replace it with plans that favor the well-to-do, two experts argued on Wednesday.

The two former HHS officials, now health policy experts argue in the New England Journal of Medicine that, if Price had his way, he would funnel federal money to people who do not need it.

According to reports Rep. Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon, would free insurance companies to return to some of their worst abuses of patients and take away subsidies that help the poor to afford medical care.

Price has sponsored legislation that supports making armor-piercing bullets more accessible and opposed regulation on cigarettes and has voted against regulating tobacco as a drug, Richard Frank, a health care policy professor at Harvard Medical School, and Sherry Glied, dean of the graduate school of public service at New York University, wrote in their joint commentary.

They also wrote that Price has voted against funding for combating malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis. He was against the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, but voted in favor of allowing hospitals to turn away Medicaid and Medicare patients seeking non-emergency care if they could not afford  the payments.

Price opposes stem-cell research, voted against expanding the National Institutes of Health budget and went against the recently enacted 21st Century Cures Act, and shows particular animus toward the cancer Moonshot.

Two other medical doctors, Otis Bowen and Louis Sullivan, have been HHS secretary, under former president Ronald Reagan, and under George H.W. Bush respectively, this should be a plus, according to Glied and Frank.

They argued that both men, in the line of their work at HHS, serving in Republican administrations, drew on a long tradition of physicians as advocates for the vulnerable, defenders of public health and also enthusiastic proponents of scientific approaches to clinical care, but Price represents a different tradition.

Trump's pick of Price has been praised because he is a physician, a rare choice to head HHS, the agency that oversees the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Medicare and Medicaid, according to Dizzbee.

HHS is also where the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, was written and is implemented. Price may want more accountability in health care, but compared to his predecessors' actions, Price's record demonstrates less concern for the sick, the poor, and the health of the public, but shows a much greater concern for the economic wellbeing of their physician caregivers, they wrote.

Price has been advocating for the repeal of Obamacare, which did not only set up marketplaces for people to buy subsidized health insurance, but ended insurance company practices of turning away sick customers and capping payments when patients got expensive to treat. The Obamacare rules also require insurance companies to provide preventive care such as vaccination and cancer screenings for free.

According to NBCnews, he has criticized Obamacare, saying it is not offering enough options. Price wrote on his blog on November 1 that the Obama administration has admitted that 20 percent of people shopping for insurance on the Obamacare exchanges will have only one coverage option to choose from and that is not actually a choice.

However, Glied and Frank argue that Price's replacement ideas would not help people who need it most. Price's plan would withdraw almost all the ACA's federal consumer protection regulations, including limits on insurer profits and requirement that plans cover essential health benefits.

His plan would cancel the expansion of Medicaid that states have used to cover many low-income working adults, and replace it with flat tax credits based on age, not on income.

According to the two, Price's replacement proposal would make it much more difficult for low-income earners to afford health insurance. It would divert federal tax dollars to people who can already buy individual coverage without subsidies and will substantially reduce protections for those with pre-existing conditions.