Better Start Kissing Your Medicare Goodbye Now

Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, whom Trump is naming to head the Department of Health and Human Services, has already announced that the phasing out of Medicare ("privatization") won't come in the first toxic wave of new Trump legislation but will come in the second wave next summer. Price seemed confident that a simple Republican majority in the U.S. Senate would be able to phase out Medicare using "budget reconciliation." Passage of an end to Medicare is guaranteed to pass the House.

Via TPM: "Price, an orthopedic surgeon and Budget Committee Chair in the outgoing Congress, is an arch-critic of 'Obamacare' and a top supporter of Speaker Paul Ryan's plan to phase out Medicare and replace it with private insurance and vouchers."

Price is a surgeon who opposes abortion rights. In the U.S. House he supported the proposed Protect Life Act, which would have denied Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) funding to health care plans that offered abortion. That law would also have allowed hospitals to decline to provide emergency abortion care. 

He voted against a bill prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation, and he voted in favor of constitutionally defining marriage as one-man-one-woman. He voted against H.R. 2965, which would have ended "don't ask, don't tell." In 2008 Price signed a pledge sponsored by Americans for Prosperity promising to vote against any Global Warming legislation that would raise taxes.

He joins the Trump Locker Room, and he's bringing his own towel.