Stephen Lendman

In response to Health and Human Services Secretary Price spending hundreds of thousands of dollars at taxpayers’ expense on at least 24 private charter plane flights, Trump expressed outrage, saying he’s “very very unhappy” about it.

Asked if he’d fire Price, he sternly said “we’ll see,” adding “I am not happy about it. I’m going to look at it. I’ll let him know it.”

On Friday, the hammer fell. Trump asked Price to resign, a polite way of sacking him, a White House statement saying HHS Secretary “Thomas Price offered his resignation earlier today and the president accepted.”

In 2009 as a House member, he called a proposal to spend $550 million on government planes for federal officials and congressional members “fiscal irresponsibility” - except for his own luxury travel, as things turned out.

Trump intends naming Assistant HHS Secretary Don Wright to replace him. He’s a physician/former Bush administration director of the Office of Occupational Medicine for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and Principal Deputy Assistant HHS Secretary, along with other HHS positions. He strongly supports marketplace medicine extremism like his former boss.

Price is a physician, former congressman, and Georgia state senator.

He’s deplorably hard-right, a Tea Party caucus member, a marketplace medicine extremist, contemptuous of Medicare and Medicaid, wanting both programs dismantled - committed to ending government involvement in healthcare.

He’s pro-war, pro-Wall Street, pro-corporatism, anti-abortion, and anti-government of, for and by everyone equitably.

He’s a gun lobby favorite, co-sponsored legislation to make same-sex marriages illegal, and another bill forbidding employers from discriminating against gay, lesbian and transgender individuals.

He supported the Empowering Patients First Act, a scheme to repeal Obamacare and accelerate the dismantling of Medicare and Medicaid, wanting both programs privatized, putting healthcare industry profiteers exclusively in charge.

He voted against the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act - for the first time empowering the FDA to regulate tobacco as a drug.

He supported Protect Life Act legislation. If enacted, it would have denied ACA funding to healthcare plans including abortion as a benefit, along with letting hospitals decline to provide them.

He co-sponsored other pro-life legislation. He claimed ACA’s birth-control coverage mandate violated religious freedoms. Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America rated him zero. The gay rights Human Rights Campaign also rated him zero.

He’s strongly anti-social justice, supporting legislation to reduce non-security spending, intended to help ordinary Americans.

Last February, he was narrowly confirmed as HHS secretary, all Republicans supporting him, all undemocratic Dems but one against - the vote 52 - 47.

He’s been Trump’s point man to repeal and replace Obamacare with alternatives more deplorable than ACA - so far not achieved.

Though gone, his successor will continue the pro-business extremist agenda he supports.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

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