It's really hard to imagine that the most corrupt of all of popular vote loser Donald Trump's picks would be a sitting member of Congress, but that's what we've got with Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) nominated to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. In addition to the very strong whiff of insider trading emanating from him now there's the odor of influence peddling.
The $3 pill known as BiDil was already a difficult sell when a Georgia-based pharmaceutical company bought the marketing rights a few years ago. A treatment for African Americans suffering from heart failure, BiDil had never really caught on, forcing the drug company that developed it to take a buyout offer. One strike against the drug was a 2009 study that raised questions about its safety and effectiveness.
So last summer, the new owner of the drug, Arbor Pharmaceuticals LLC of Atlanta, sought to get the study taken down from a government website. For help, the company turned to the office of a congressman to whom the CEO had given the maximum $2,700 campaign donation—Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia Republican nominated by Donald Trump to become head of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Over the next few months, one of Price’s aides emailed the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality at least half a dozen times, asking at one point "what seems to be the hold up" in getting the study removed from the website, which aims to help patients, health care providers and policy makers make "better treatment choices." In the end, the agency, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, kept the study online but added a note: “This report is greater than 5 years old. Findings may be used for research purposes but should not be considered current."
Now, Price is from Georgia and powerful as chairman of the Budget Committee, so it's not out of bounds for a Georgia-based company to be asking for assistance. Asking for that assistance along with a maximum campaign contribution, though, that's a little iffy. A lot iffy. And really not a good thing when the help being sought is to suppress the fact that a drug developed for African Americans, who represent a sizable population within the state of Georgia, with heart failure has safety concerns! To be specific, the findings were "that BiDil was not actually associated with a significant reduction in death or 2009 hospitalization," and "in all but one of its test groups the drug was associated with significantly increased risk of hospitalization for heart failure."
Price himself is a physician, though his specialty is orthopedics, a long way from cardiology. But one would hope a physician, having taken that whole "first do no harm" oath, would be particularly anxious to see that other doctors be informed when a drug they might prescribe is risky. You know, professionally it just seems like the thing to do. Unless you're Tom Price.