Rep. Tom Price, the Obamacare-hating and shady stock-trading nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department is getting a grilling from the Democrats during his confirmation hearing right now. Of course, he's getting lots of love from the Republicans. Watch the live stream after the jump.
Today is a day to contact your representatives about health care. You can find some information about what to say and sample scripts via Indivisible Austin.
Also, share your thoughts and observations below.
Tom Price graphic via DonkeyHotey and Creative Commons license.
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Kevin Koster commented
2017-01-19 09:53:10 -0500
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Acting president Pence is never going to approve a Single Payer program. He will not allow it to go forward in Congress and he would tell the Tweeter in Chief not to sign it if it somehow did.
Paul Ryan doesn’t care if these people lose their coverage – he just wants to couch it in a way that will make it sound palatable and make himself sound sympathetic. That’s why he was superficially nice to the young woman at the Town Hall – he was providing the “friendly face” that Rick Santorum refreshingly didn’t a month earlier. And it doesn’t change that Ryan is ramming through legislation that will absolutely cause people to lose their coverage, and that he will completely support the Pence White House’s push to encourage the DACA participants to leave the USA with their families. Remember that they don’t have to have a “deportation force”. All they need to do is send that letter, and those families will get the message. We are already starting to see movement of people beginning to flee the country in advance of this – that will likely continue and accelerate.
As for Trump, I strongly doubt he thinks that much about whether or not the average person has coverage. He just doesn’t want to be asked an embarrassing question about it. After O’Reilly and Hannity feed him the talking points about how this is all the Dems’ fault, and after Pence preps him on it, he’ll issue a tweet to absolve himself and the GOP of responsibility since they’re really just cleaning up the Dems’ mess.
I strongly recommend people prepare for the ACA to be completely defunct in short order. Assuming that these guys would go back on their promises to kill it is not realistic. Please remember this has nothing to do with whether anyone has health insurance. It is specifically about killing the ACA and then retroactively declaring President Obama to be a failure who accomplished nothing.
These people have given us no indication that they actually care about how regular people get their health care. If they had cared about that, we’d have seen a real participation from them 8 years ago and all through the years since. The fact is, they don’t care. We should not assume that they do.
Paul Ryan doesn’t care if these people lose their coverage – he just wants to couch it in a way that will make it sound palatable and make himself sound sympathetic. That’s why he was superficially nice to the young woman at the Town Hall – he was providing the “friendly face” that Rick Santorum refreshingly didn’t a month earlier. And it doesn’t change that Ryan is ramming through legislation that will absolutely cause people to lose their coverage, and that he will completely support the Pence White House’s push to encourage the DACA participants to leave the USA with their families. Remember that they don’t have to have a “deportation force”. All they need to do is send that letter, and those families will get the message. We are already starting to see movement of people beginning to flee the country in advance of this – that will likely continue and accelerate.
As for Trump, I strongly doubt he thinks that much about whether or not the average person has coverage. He just doesn’t want to be asked an embarrassing question about it. After O’Reilly and Hannity feed him the talking points about how this is all the Dems’ fault, and after Pence preps him on it, he’ll issue a tweet to absolve himself and the GOP of responsibility since they’re really just cleaning up the Dems’ mess.
I strongly recommend people prepare for the ACA to be completely defunct in short order. Assuming that these guys would go back on their promises to kill it is not realistic. Please remember this has nothing to do with whether anyone has health insurance. It is specifically about killing the ACA and then retroactively declaring President Obama to be a failure who accomplished nothing.
These people have given us no indication that they actually care about how regular people get their health care. If they had cared about that, we’d have seen a real participation from them 8 years ago and all through the years since. The fact is, they don’t care. We should not assume that they do.
Bemused commented
2017-01-19 05:23:20 -0500
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Saw only the last half hour or so during which Price repeatedly said his priority was the patient’s well-being. That’s a great soundbite but it ignores the fact that a “patient” has already passed the gauntlet starting with the admissions clerk at the reception desk (“May I have your insurance card, Sir/Madam?”). For all Price cares, those who don’t make it past that clerk are so many cockroaches. They are not “patients”. I detected a wide gap between Price and the true meaning of the Hippocratic oath.
In fact, Price sounded a lot like a Jesuit friend with whom I’d had the temerity of trying to discuss whether or not God exists. I was and remain a total agnostic on the subject. Anyway, we had a great talk until he ended it with “God exists because I believe he exists”. Price doesn’t even perceive the possibility that he might also, as a physician, be interested in the welfare of people who don’t have the wherewithal to become patients.
I take hope in realising that both Paul Ryan and President-elect Trump have apparently realised that pulling the rug from under the feet of millions of people is a time-bomb. In fact, the actual number at risk may actually be double the 20 or so million formerly un-insured being bandied about: what happens to that number if one adds the young adults, people with pre-existing conditions, people needing help to overcome opiate addiction or get past a psychological crisis, people needing long-term care after having their lives saved at an ER?
Loved Tim Kaine’s (and others, he said) insistence on the Hippocratic oath (“Do no harm”). Made Price look wilfully blind to the fact that there are people who will quite simply die were the ACA to be fully repealed as from the get-go, leaving them in the lurch while the Trumplicans try to work out something acceptable to the wider public. A few weeks ago, one of the pundits on a CNN talk show said that the principle of health care as a right not a privilege was established once and for all by the ACA, even in the USA. Methinks the only way the Trumplicans can come out looking even halfway humane might wind up being to introduce some sort of single-payer system. Now, that would be one for the history books!
In fact, Price sounded a lot like a Jesuit friend with whom I’d had the temerity of trying to discuss whether or not God exists. I was and remain a total agnostic on the subject. Anyway, we had a great talk until he ended it with “God exists because I believe he exists”. Price doesn’t even perceive the possibility that he might also, as a physician, be interested in the welfare of people who don’t have the wherewithal to become patients.
I take hope in realising that both Paul Ryan and President-elect Trump have apparently realised that pulling the rug from under the feet of millions of people is a time-bomb. In fact, the actual number at risk may actually be double the 20 or so million formerly un-insured being bandied about: what happens to that number if one adds the young adults, people with pre-existing conditions, people needing help to overcome opiate addiction or get past a psychological crisis, people needing long-term care after having their lives saved at an ER?
Loved Tim Kaine’s (and others, he said) insistence on the Hippocratic oath (“Do no harm”). Made Price look wilfully blind to the fact that there are people who will quite simply die were the ACA to be fully repealed as from the get-go, leaving them in the lurch while the Trumplicans try to work out something acceptable to the wider public. A few weeks ago, one of the pundits on a CNN talk show said that the principle of health care as a right not a privilege was established once and for all by the ACA, even in the USA. Methinks the only way the Trumplicans can come out looking even halfway humane might wind up being to introduce some sort of single-payer system. Now, that would be one for the history books!
Kevin Koster commented
2017-01-18 19:43:41 -0500
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And looking at various parts of this hearing, it’s pretty obvious that the Right is not going to allow the Dems any room to even start a discussion about whether Price is fit to hold this office. The time limits are intended to rush these appointees through before the GOP quickly votes them in.
Elizabeth Warren’s attempt to get any information into her segment was of course interrupted by the Chair and then terminated after reluctantly being allowed to go on for one more minute albeit with a pointed interruption.
The sad reality is that Price really is going to be the next person to handle HHS, and he really is going to do some major damage to it. He’s already made clear that he intends to remove all funding from Planned Parenthood. That he intends to go with the most draconian standards possible regarding the right to choose. That he frankly intends to pull funding from all areas of HHS with which he politically disagrees, especially stem cell research. That he does not understand the relationship between easy access to military-grade guns by mentally disturbed people and the resulting homicides. Basically that he intends to run HHS from an extremely Hard Right Wing, superficially pious perspective. His approach is going to undoubtedly result in significant misery for all but the righteous few with whom Price agrees. Again a sad reminder of how elections have consequences. Had those voters shown up at the booths in the swing states, we would not now be having this conversation.
Elizabeth Warren’s attempt to get any information into her segment was of course interrupted by the Chair and then terminated after reluctantly being allowed to go on for one more minute albeit with a pointed interruption.
The sad reality is that Price really is going to be the next person to handle HHS, and he really is going to do some major damage to it. He’s already made clear that he intends to remove all funding from Planned Parenthood. That he intends to go with the most draconian standards possible regarding the right to choose. That he frankly intends to pull funding from all areas of HHS with which he politically disagrees, especially stem cell research. That he does not understand the relationship between easy access to military-grade guns by mentally disturbed people and the resulting homicides. Basically that he intends to run HHS from an extremely Hard Right Wing, superficially pious perspective. His approach is going to undoubtedly result in significant misery for all but the righteous few with whom Price agrees. Again a sad reminder of how elections have consequences. Had those voters shown up at the booths in the swing states, we would not now be having this conversation.
Kevin Koster commented
2017-01-18 17:01:09 -0500
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Price is being refreshingly consistent with what we know are both his intentions and that of the incoming Pence White House. He’s been very clear about what he’s thinking from what we can see of his recent proposals in Congress about healthcare.
When he says that children will have “access” to cancer treatment, he means that their parents will have the ability to put money into their individual Health Savings Accounts with extremely high deductibles. Meaning that they will not be covered unless their parents have a LOT of money to cover their care. Meaning that the parents are going to be on their own if they were depending on the ACA. It’s a Libertarian approach that works if you are already fairly wealthy but will be a disaster for anyone in the middle class and below.
No surprise that Franken was cut off. The GOP hates him and has always seen his Senate membership as illegitimate.
And yes, Price intends to cut Medicare and Medicaid, as he’s described before. The whole point of this is to put more of the burden on the individual to cover themselves.
There’s another fun wrinkle in Price’s recent plan – I believe he’s included a notion of removing or reducing the tax credit employers get for covering their employees. Meaning that the burden would now go to the employees themselves, in the same way that the parents of the child with cancer will shoulder nearly all of the financial burden of their situation. Again, this is consistent with the approach embraced by the Pence White House and we shouldn’t be surprised by it. It’s the approach of IGMFU and we’re looking at 4 years of it starting Friday.
It’s the same approach that will give us a gutted Dept of Education that smiles at voucher programs and charter schools over public schools, that will eliminate the EPA as anything but a side office that approves drilling, and that will establish a Dept of Labor that makes sure that uppity workers don’t cause too many headaches for the “job creators”.
I’ve been waiting to see if any of these people would surprise me in their approach to governance and public policy. So far, they’re all following the Hard Right playbook to a T.
When he says that children will have “access” to cancer treatment, he means that their parents will have the ability to put money into their individual Health Savings Accounts with extremely high deductibles. Meaning that they will not be covered unless their parents have a LOT of money to cover their care. Meaning that the parents are going to be on their own if they were depending on the ACA. It’s a Libertarian approach that works if you are already fairly wealthy but will be a disaster for anyone in the middle class and below.
No surprise that Franken was cut off. The GOP hates him and has always seen his Senate membership as illegitimate.
And yes, Price intends to cut Medicare and Medicaid, as he’s described before. The whole point of this is to put more of the burden on the individual to cover themselves.
There’s another fun wrinkle in Price’s recent plan – I believe he’s included a notion of removing or reducing the tax credit employers get for covering their employees. Meaning that the burden would now go to the employees themselves, in the same way that the parents of the child with cancer will shoulder nearly all of the financial burden of their situation. Again, this is consistent with the approach embraced by the Pence White House and we shouldn’t be surprised by it. It’s the approach of IGMFU and we’re looking at 4 years of it starting Friday.
It’s the same approach that will give us a gutted Dept of Education that smiles at voucher programs and charter schools over public schools, that will eliminate the EPA as anything but a side office that approves drilling, and that will establish a Dept of Labor that makes sure that uppity workers don’t cause too many headaches for the “job creators”.
I’ve been waiting to see if any of these people would surprise me in their approach to governance and public policy. So far, they’re all following the Hard Right playbook to a T.
Ellen commented
2017-01-18 13:02:53 -0500
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Senator Warren is on fire and I think she’s effective on demanding Price promise he won’t cut Medicare funding, which he refused to do.
Ellen commented
2017-01-18 12:35:14 -0500
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I just called my congressman and both senators and they all said the same thing, which is the best thing I can do is to keep calling my representatives.
Ellen commented
2017-01-18 11:54:58 -0500
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When Al Franken was told his time was up, after a few minutes, he pointed out that the Benghazi hearing took 11 hours.
Ellen commented
2017-01-18 11:28:22 -0500
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I just heard Democrat Bob Casey give Price a loophole he could drive a truck through. Casey asked Price to commit to making sure children get treatment for cancer. Price gave a long answer that said he’s committed to making sure children have “access” to coverage and Casey volunteered, “I heard yes.”
What is the matter with these stupid, spineless Democrats?
What is the matter with these stupid, spineless Democrats?