Tom Price, MD, led a successful orthopedic surgery practice in Atlanta before deciding to run for Georgia's state Senate in 1996. After winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2004, he served in Congress until he was selected by President Donald Trump to be the 23rd secretary of the Health and Human Service Department in 2017.
Dr. Price shared insights on topics ranging from partisan politics to behavioral health policy during a May 10 conversation with Scott Becker, JD, and publisher of Becker's Hospital Review, at the Becker's Hospital Review Health IT + Clinical Leadership 2018 conference in Chicago.
Here are five takeaways from their conversation:
1. "Politics and medicine are so different. I loved practicing medicine and caring for people. It was an incredible privilege and honor to are folks to help them get well," said Dr. Price. "In medicine, everybody is on the same team in operating room, all trying to get the patient well. In politics you are certain that half the people are out to get you and not so certain about the other half."
2. "I have been asked for decades what I would do to fix the healthcare system. The question belies the premise, which is that we don't have a healthcare system," said Dr. Price.
3. "With President Trump, what you see is what you get. He's transparent about who he is and what he believes, and I can't remember the last person who hadn't been elected to any office. This is new, to have somebody who hasn't had any political experience assume the highest office in the land," Dr. Price said. "I mentioned this before the election of 2016, which is that we may be in the middle of a political realignment in the nation. You don't know you're in it when you’re in it, but a political realignment for your society is a fascinating thing to witness."
4. "In behavioral health, the population caring for patients arena is aging. Fifty percent of psychiatrists right now are over the age of 55, which is pretty amazing. I sincerely believe that we have enough money in healthcare, we just allocate it poorly, and we waste a lot," said Dr. Price. "If we had a system where patients could move voluntarily among our different healthcare systems, that would facilitate the movement of patients among those systems,and over time we would gradually move in a better direction, not only from a quality standpoint, but also from a reimbursement standpoint."
5. "Will the [Department of Veterans Affairs] become more open to solutions? The whole movement toward choice in the VA system has been strong and bipartisan because when folks go back home they have challenges within the VA system. They need an option, a pressure valve release," said Dr. Price. "That release is to allow them into the private healthcare system. We've given them a societal problem. The best way to solve that is for them to get care where they think is most appropriate for them."