Boy howdy, does Republican Georgia Rep. Tom Price have some things to talk about during his upcoming confirmation hearings to be popular vote loser Donald Trump's secretary of Health and Human Services. Seriously, the man is a walking looming SEC investigation.
Donald Trump’s nominee to be the country’s next health care czar invested last year as much as $90,000 in six pharmaceutical companies shortly before leading a legislative and public relations effort that benefited those specific companies, records show.
Within weeks of making investments worth between $1,000 and $15,000 in Eli Lilly, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Amgen, McKesson, Biogen and Pfizer according to Congressional disclosure forms, Rep. Tom Price co-sponsored legislation and took part in a public effort that ultimately killed proposed regulatory changes that would have likely hurt those companies’ bottom lines.
That's on top of the other stinky investments he's made, though Monday's revelation that he invested in a company, wrote legislation focused on helping that very company, then got a big campaign donation from that company in a matter of weeks was pretty blatant.
These ethics questions have been dogging Price since Trump nominated him because, again, he's an SEC investigation just waiting to happen. According to Time, which has reviewed his congressional financial disclosures, "Price held between at least $60,000 and $250,000 in stocks in health care-related companies as of the end of 2016." He buys the stock, he uses his position in Congress to benefit the companies he bought the stock in, and blithely goes on to do it again. His Democratic colleague in the House, Rep. Jackie Speier from California, has it right.