”Avarice,” by Jesus Solana
Two public-health experts say that President Trump’s choice to be secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Republican congressman and rich orthopedic surgeon Tom Price, M.D., has shown more concern about the finances of physicians than for the sick, the poor or public health. U.S. physicians are the highest paid in the world.
Sherry A. Glied, Ph.D., and Richard G. Frank, Ph.D., give many reasons why, they assert, patients, especially low-income ones, would fare worse with healthcare under proposals favored by Dr. Price.
Dr. Glied, from the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at New York University in New York City, and Dr. Frank, from the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard University, in Massachusetts, were assistant secretaries for planning and evaluation in HHS from 2010 to 2012 and 2014 to 2016, respectively.
Dr. Price is a staunch opponent of the Affordable Care Act, and his plan to replace it, called the Empowering Patients First Act, eliminates Medicaid expansion and replaces the subsidies with flat tax credits based on age instead of income.
The authors call his plan is regressive and offers bigger subsidies relative to income for the rich and much smaller subsidies for low-income people.
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