Tom Price is out as Health and Human Services Secretary. Considering Obamacare still remains after nine months of Trump being in office, this is probably a good thing. But that’s not the reason he’s gone – he showed himself to be a swamp creature.
Price tendered his resignation on Friday after President Trump expressed dissatisfaction with Price’s travel expenditures. Since being sworn into office, Price has spent over $1,000,000 on travel through charter of private and military jets. Some of these expenditures, such as international trips, are not at issue. It is the trips that Price took for seemingly unjustifiable reasons, and those where he mixed business with pleasure that are drawing the most scrutiny.
POLITICO revealed in a series of articles that Price flew at least 26 times on private aircraft at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, a sharp break with his predecessors’ practice. Many of Price’s flights were between major cities that offered inexpensive alternatives on commercial airlines, including Nashville, Philadelphia and San Diego.
On some of those trips, Price, an orthopedic surgeon, mixed official business with personal affairs. He took a government-funded private jet in August to get to St. Simons Island, an exclusive Georgia resort where he and his wife own land, a day and a half before he addressed a medical conference he and his wife have long attended. In June, HHS chartered a private jet to fly Price to Nashville, where he owns a condominium and where his son resides. Price toured a medicine dispensary, spoke to a local health summit organized by a friend and had lunch with his son, an HHS official confirmed.
Price also used military aircraft for multi-national trips to Africa, Europe and Asia, at a cost of more than $500,000 to taxpayers. The White House said it had approved those trips but not the private jets within the United States.
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