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Trump Chooses Rep. Tom Price for HHS
From the Washington Post:
Published in GeneralPresident-elect Donald Trump has chosen Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), an orthopedic surgeon who has been one of Capitol Hill’s fiercest critics of President Obama’s health care law, to be secretary of health and human services, a person briefed on the decision confirmed Monday night.
The public announcement of Trump’s selection of Price, a six-term congressman who chairs the House Budget Committee and is regarded as a policy wonk, is expected to be made as early as Tuesday.
Another wonderful pick! I am getting excited with so many of the Trump selections.
Many appointments so far have been reassuring and gratifying. Now if he would only quit tweeting, I might could find my inner optimist.
When Trump pulls folks from the house, is there a risk to lose those current majorities?
EDs,
So Trump isn’t really a conservative. Well, his appointments sure look conservative to me. They can’t hold these horses back!!!
Regards,
Jim
Price is a decent pick. I still wish he would have thought about Bobby Jindal for the post. It is apparent between this pick and the Pompeo pick that Pence is having a lot of influence.
Darn! I was in favor of Rick Santorum. I wanted to see the bureaucrats’ heads explode (and also Planned Parenthood).
Pence keeps delivering for conservatives. Were Christie overseeing the transition, no doubt he would have pushed for Rich Bagger and a very pharma-friendly reform of Obamacare. With Price the odds of some major surgery, more like organ harvesting from a cadaver, are quite good.
Let the liberals and the NTs continue their hysterical focus on Trump’s tweets while Pence assembles the most conservative cabinet in memory.
Any NTs expecting Judge Judy or Trump’s sister for SCOTUS?
Any NTs want to explain how Tom Price and Neera Tanden are a pick’em here?
Price is an out of the park selection. Superb.
The worst mistake that Hillary made in the 1993 fiasco was she did not have a real provider anywhere in that commission, She had some academics and I knew some of them. They knew only an academic clinic practice and had no idea how things go in real life. If I had a qualm about Price it would be how much connection he has to the AMA which is a useless appendage on medicine.
Santorum was good on health care when he was in the House. His wife was an ER nurse.
In the Senate he got presidentitis and seems to still be infected.
To gain some fair-minded perspective, compare the Trump/Pence choice here, Tom Price, with Ronald Reagan’s choice: Richard Schweiker, who often rated 85-90% on the Americans for Democratic Action scorecard.
What are you hoping for with comments like this one? Every NTer, myself included, who I’ve heard from has been happy about Trump’s selections (funny how you attribute them to Pence) and is quite optimistic. No reason we can’t concede points on his bad tweets, but talking about his appointments is a good thing and I think most conservatives are doing so.
Ryan, I didn’t think you were an NT today. Am I wrong? It appeared to me that you were actually somewhat cheered, beyond delicious schadenfreude, by Trump’s election. Again, am I wrong? Didn’t you state you might have voted for Trump if you had been voting in a close swing state?
You have to be a very narrow reader of conservative media though to imagine that NT sentiment is not still pretty prevalent today.
And you have to be a very wide reader of NT inflected conservative media (my favorite reads) to encounter any straightforward “I was wrong” pieces. Sure there’s some hedging and grudging approval but it’s still very coded.
So, for those who are NT today I think my questions are relevant. If my questions make former NTs uncomfortable it might help to promote some practical political commonsense the next time a very imperfect conservative faces another gawdawful leftist.
There is nothing funny about my attributing these selections to Pence’s influence. It was always the contention of reluctant Trump supporters that the influence of the conservatives shaping his administration and staffing executive departments and filling over 100 judicial vacancies was going to be a key.
And let’s not discount the influence of the toxic liberal racial/sexual/ethnic grievance machine that would keep Trump’s antiliberal instincts sharp. That’s still humming at full Corbyn, thank God.
If it wasn’t for Trump’s tweeting (and other, I assume, “distasteful” antics) you would most likely not be in a position of reassurance or gratification. It boggles my mind (especially at this point) how anyone can not understand this. Actually, it doesn’t…2016…The Great Conservative Revealing…now I know.
This is a marvelous pick.
I especially like Price’s policy preference to allow anyone qualified for Medicaid/Medicare/Tricare to apply the funds that would have been spent, toward private coverage of their choosing. Over a few years’ time, this will cripple those monster entitlement programs, and if the private coverage can take a wide range of forms, it will lead to lower health care costs.
I am very, very excited. For the first time, I now believe that Trump will get more achieved than Ted Cruz might have done.
I have to agree with you both. He has made some excellent picks…the big one for SOS still to come…but he would be well advised to run his tweets past Reince or Kellyann before pushing the send button.
Again good news, but can’t we find another source than the Washington Post?
MRC.org search shows 6823 results for “media bias” and “Washington Post.”
Wikileaks shows them as colluding with the other side (note lower left in chart below).
Tom Price is a great pick! I heard him speak a number of times on Obamacare, and some of the suggestions he gave for a different plan (he formulated his own) were excellent. He showed great empathy for patients and doctors alike, and I think he’s just plain smart. Good job!
This is an excellent pick! Not to bring up old wounds, but those arguing for “nevertrump” had it all wrong. An administration filled with conservatives is way better than a Hillary administration.
With the Price pick we now have a pretty clear idea on what the repeal of Obamacare will look like. His H.R. 2300 bill, the Empowering Patients First Act, will almost certainly be the starting point. This seems very promising.
Well put. I guess I was never NEVER Trump but just “never” Trump, in scare quotes. Because NEVER means never.
Can’t even say the jury’s still out – we’re still in opening arguments. But these picks look way better than anything this “never”Trumper expected.
Fair enough. I was mistaking your comment to mean “anyone who was in the NT camp.” At this point, there doesn’t seem to be any point of even having a NT camp on the conservative side. No, I haven’t been reading anything like that, and all my favorite pundits (Goldberg, et. al.) seem to be in the same boat I am in. It’s great that he won, I’m super impressed so far, I’m still worried about many of the same things as before, but I’m really excited about being proven wrong.
Seems NT is now on the left, and while we should be careful to avoid too much affirmation (especially when they draw faulty conclusions), I see no need for us to coalesce around the man himself as if to suggest that any criticism undermines us – I do not need to defend his ridiculous tweets in order to defend his spectacular cabinet. And when/if he does something I don’t like, I hope we retain the ability to criticize honestly.
This is a great pick for HHS. Price is a policy wonk, knows Obamacare inside & out, is an MD, is an excellent advocate for his positions and understands the politics of these issues.
LOL, his tweets are not slowing down. Tweets and You Tube are his way of communicating to the world. Over the heads of the MSM that like to “shape” news to match their political agendas.
As soon as he has someone monitoring his tweets, they will be useless. It will be interesting to see how active the POTUS website is in 2017.
I don’t think we can hold Trump to any of the standards we are used to in a President. We will only be disappointed. He won for a reason and one of those reasons is he is not a politician. I’m just along for the ride and I am pleased with his selections for top positions. I would love to see Petraeus or Romney as Secretary of State and the other one heading the VA.
Decent? The Price is Right.
Jindal would be great too, but why not an actual doctor for once?
This one looks good. A good executive defines goals, communicates those goals, builds and maintains support for action and then picks good people to deliver.
Basic success in business skills, common to the best CEOs.
Lacking in policy wonks, lawyers and politicians.
Politicians separate re-election from results in their planning. CEOs understand results lead to re-election and integrate the two.
So far, so good for a guy who was a boorish, idiot, know nothing boob, a clown and the scourge of the Ricochet main feed.
Indeed, his progress has been remarkable. I can’t remember anyone getting so smart so fast since my father did when I turned 22.
It has mystified me why so many Republicans, and not just NT ‘s, have been surprised by the quality of Trump’s cabinet selections. One does not become a billionaire not knowing how to surround yourself with competent people. His outrageous comments somehow blinded us to the fact that he has reached a level in business few Americans have ever achieved. He has also proved that anyone not meeting his expectations will be unceremoniously dumped. Ask Governor Christie.