[usafa92]

Bloomberg and AOL have reported this as confirmed, but Bloomberg can't be posted here. Newt also just tweeted his congratulations to Tom Price. Very solid pick by Trump.

[Jim W N]

NUKE THE UNCONSTITUTIONAL HHS

[fkabuckeyesrule]

So I guess this means we get a new congressperson. Any names for possible replacement?

[Salvation]

The Price is right!

[LittleBillyInfidel]

Just watch... They’ll bring down the cost of both insurance and healthcare. It will be a huge success. B-HO will then pop up his nerdy head and take credit for it with a statement such as: “This, this notion that...uh...somehow my legislation didn’t have good bones to... uh, provide these results is just wrong headed. My work... had a profound effect on the results that, uh, we’re benefiting from today.”

[Scooter100]

Congratulations Dr.Price! Well done Mr.President! What a great choice...surgeon and chair of Budget Finance Committee.

I met Tom 15 years ago at a fundraiser in Atlanta and I'll never forget he had a lapel button that said, "My Doctor, My Choice".

I think we may finally be in good hands wrt healthcare! I'm not tired of winning just yet....!

[Scooter100]

The New York Slimes at its finest....they just NEVER give up, do they? It’s DOCTOR Thomas Price, M.D. What a bunch of prize knuckleheads.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Tom Price is a good guy. I was hoping he would get Speaker of the House. HHS is a good gig too.

[Repeal 16-17]

Another great selection. Obamacare goes on deathwatch effective at noon on January 20.

[dadfly]

nope. smells like another gope. why can’t we get a private doc from an activist group like AAPS who’s been fighting and suffering from obamacare from day one. it makes no sense to me to choose a gope politician to dismantle obamacare.

[dadfly]

for instance, a far better choice than price would be Dr. Betsy McCaughey.

[1Old Pro]

The sound you hear is Obama’s “legacy” sinking to the bottom of the sea.

[HokieMom]

Rep. Tom Price

Brent Bozell's facebook post:

"The appointment of Rep. Tom Price as Secretary of Health and Human Services is yet another excellent cabinet choice by President-elect Trump. Trump seems absolutely committed to honoring his pro-life commitments by selecting a man with a 100% pro-life record. No wonder Trump is driving the media nuts. These choices are all ... conservatives. And in choosing a pro-life cabinet member, Trump has disrupted the liberal media's pro-abortion agenda, their single most important issue. Conservatives should be very pleased with the decisions coming out of Trump Tower."

[Haiku Guy]

My new favorite words: “The Secretary shall determine...”

[Scott from the Left Coast]

Outstanding pick.

Someone who can put us on a much better path with healthcare and healthcare insurance. This guy knows what to do.

[Degaston]

I applaud the efforts of Trump to appoint a reformer. But I have plenty of unanswered questions. Keep in mind that if we don’t fix the issue of the cost of health care in the USA that its a mathematical certainty that we will go over the fiscal cliff and it could happen a lot faster than we can be prepared to handle it.

For starts we see that 37% of the federal spending is on health care and this number is rising 9% per annum. This is not a “free market” system. The root cause of what ails our country’s health care system is Big Government. And its going to take a HHS Secretary with courage to get it fixed.

What is Secretary-Candidate Price saying about the monopolist pricing structures in health care? What does he say about drugs that are 10 times or more expensive here in the USA compared to other developed nations? What about laws banning the arbitrage of those prices which would instantly collapse said price structure?
What about the problem in our system that has expanded “administrators” at 5x the rate of care-givers, all of whom you pay for? What about a so-called “insurance” system that demands you pay continuing deductible amounts after the insured event happens should a calendar boundary be crossed? Isn’t this fraud? What about a refusal to post prices that has become the norm in the health care industry thanks to the monopolistic practices which the swampmeisters have given us? What about the common practice of presenting customers with a document demanding that they accept any bill for anything done, with no cap and no binding estimate? What about how they are charging different prices after the fact based on how you pay rather than what is done? Not only is this improper but it may be quite-arguably criminal.
Isn’t it a felony to give kickbacks like this?
What about how patients being forced you pay to correct errors made by the providers? Or being forced to pay to treat infections and diseases contracted as a result of being in said hospital and inadequate sanitation? Or in paying these things they are still subject to lack-of-transparency, the different prices (including the kickback games), and other flaws in the system?

My guess is that Trump/Price have about 100 days in office to start fixing this issue. If we haven’t solved some of the basic problems (especially transparency on the most common forms of “price gouging”) by then its quite likely that within his 1st term that we will go over the “fiscal cliff”.

What I mean by “fiscal cliff” is that the market no longer believes that the US government will have the ability to pay its obligations and that the creditors will be screwed. They will need to take pennies on the dollar. Or they could face hyperinflation. Or both.

What kind of country, government, society, etc. we have on the other end of a USA “fiscal cliff fall” is anyone’s guess. History indicates that it would be very bad/painful for almost everyone.