The U.S. Senate approved the nomination of Representative Tom Price (R-GA) to be Secretary of Health and Human Services early this morning by a vote of 52 to 47. As secretary, Price will be responsible for a department with an annual budget of more than $1 trillion and will put him in charge of President Trump’s efforts to repeal and replace Obamacare.
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Tom Price’s no-nonsense work ethic, attention to detail, and an unquenchable thirst to be at the center of weighty decisions—particularly involving medical policy—has driven him throughout his life. Price traveled the state of Georgia in the 1990s to rail against Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal, a prelude to his first run for office. It was the centerpiece of his rise from Roswell surgeon to political power broker in the Georgia Senate. And his former campaign manager swears the chance to lead the federal government’s health care system was on his mind shortly after he won his U.S. House seat in 2004.
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California has been an early and frequent booster of the Affordable Care Act and the vast majority of the state’s politicians are committed to improving, rather than repealing, the law. The best path forward is for California to seize the opportunities in the GOP effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. Two major areas where California could cooperate with the Trump Administration and the Republican Congress include improving coverage and access for the working poor, and controlling health care costs, particularly for small businesses and those who do not receive insurance subsidies.
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Healthcare.gov enrollment came in well below what was anticipated last month. After running very slightly ahead of last year’s numbers in December, January brought the news that about 400,000 fewer people had enrolled on the federal exchanges than did so in 2016. Those are scary numbers, not so much for the absolute size of the decline—it’s roughly 4%—but because any backwards movement is very bad news for the exchanges. Trump was only president for a few days’ worth of open enrollment. Could he really have somehow caused 400,000 people to forgo health insurance?
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