On Tuesday, at the confirmation hearing for Representative Tom Price, of Georgia, for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Senator Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, asked him, “Does it burn you that they want to hold you to a different standard, now that you're a nominee, than they are as a member?” The "they" were Democrats who had raised questions about Price's trading in the stocks of companies that the House committees he sat on helped to regulate; in one case, this had involved a private placement of a stock—its sale, that is, to a few people the company chose, rather than on the open market—at a below-market price. That didn't bother Burr; indeed, what he and other Republicans found disturbing—scandalous, even—was that anyone would question these dealings. Burr spoke in a sad, low tone of circumspect rage, with an expression one might reserve for a martyr, and Price, with a modest smile, responded as such.
"Well, I, I—we know what’s going on here," Price said.
"But we do, we do," Burr said, with a half chuckle.
"And I understand. And, as my wife tells me, I volunteered for this."
"So let’s go to substance," Burr said, sounding satisfied that the ethics nonsense had been put behind them. "You and I have a lot in common. We both spoke out in opposition to Obamacare early." He then proceeded to compliment Price, and himself, for how "brave" they had been in recommending that the Affordable Care Act be scuttled in favor of their own policy preferences.
Do we, as Price contended, know what's going on here? The mystery of the Price hearings is not that people in Congress have dubious side dealings in business but how little shame is attached to the practice. The rationale, which Price offered repeatedly, is that he followed the letter of the congressional ethics rules. The spirit of those rules seems to have been of less interest to him and his colleagues. Price's critics "currently buy and sell and trade assets" in the same way that he did, Burr said, and no one—in Congress, anyway—seemed to have a problem with that. Or, as Senator Orrin Hatch, of Utah, another of Price's defenders, put it, "There is a saying about both stones and glass houses that might be applicable here." (The rhetoric and the promises made on both sides during the Presidential campaign, about draining swamps and ending corruption, does not seem to have registered.) Senator Johnny Isakson, a Republican from Georgia, argued that the whole idea of looking at the stocks that people owned was absurd—everybody owned something—and that asking nominees about such things was just an effort to "trick them." For example, he said, Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, who had questioned Price about his dealings, was invested in a mutual fund that owns shares in pharmaceutical companies. Wyden broke in to say that putting money in mutual funds was pretty different from personally investing in particular stocks.
And Price's investments appear to have been pretty personal. As the Wall Street Journal first reported, Price seems to have come to the private-placement stock, which was in an Australian biotech company, Innate Immunotherapeutics, through Representative Chris Collins, of New York. Collins owns a significant stake in the company and sits on its board. He is also on the Trump transition team. Innate Immuno's future relies on the development and the regulatory acceptance of an experimental drug for treating multiple sclerosis. According to Kaiser Health News, Price also "has a history of contacting the F.D.A. on behalf of industry campaign donors." Innate Immuno is not the only health-care company Price invested in—and he has been inconsistent in his statements about which purchases he directed himself and which were recommended by a broker or a financial adviser—but it stands out. He and his supporters have argued that the disclosures he has filed negate all worries. The first filings that Price gave to the Senate, however, undervalued his Innate Immuno stock. As CNBC noted, he listed his stake at between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars, which was what he had paid with his private-placement discount. It is now worth between a hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Remarkably, Senator Isakson used the very cronyism of the deal to defend the inaccurate disclosure, saying that differing valuations were "a normal thing" in the case of private-stock placements, for which the price that a company sets is really "an eye-of-the-beholder assessment."
It was hard to watch the hearings and come away with a sense that Republicans in either the Senate or the House will be any sort of check on the Trump Administration when it comes to ethical issues and business conflicts. (When Price was asked if it was true that, as President Trump had said, the two were were at work on a health-care plan, Price smiled and replied, “It’s true that he said that, yes.” But, beyond that, he couldn’t be baited into a confrontation with Trump.) There wasn't much sign of an ideological check on Trump's tear-it-down promises regarding health care, either.
This is what Senator Burr saw as the substance at stake: Price's commitment to dismantling Obamacare. Indeed, his record reflects an interest in going even further, and taking apart other sections of the health-care safety net, too. When questioned about what would happen to the twenty million people who have insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act, Price kept it vague, talking about "principles," including an accessible but "incentivized" system of choices. He hoped that everyone would find a way to be cared for. When Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, asked whether Medicare patients would have the same access to preventative care, Price allowed that such care is “vital for so many members of our population” and “is a part of health care"—whatever that means. The Republicans on the Senate committee were, at times, less discreet. Hatch referred to the “blathering about how we have to do everything for everybody.” Pat Toomey, of Pennsylvania, said that Obamacare's requirement that people with preëxisting conditions not be turned away was "kind of like asking the property-casualty company to rebuild the house after it has burned down." He was sure there were better ways to deal with such people, and Price agreed, with another pleasant smile. He wasn't burning, as Burr had suggested; he was ready, when it came to Obamacare, at least, to light some fires.