Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
HHS Secretary Price Eschews Commercial Flights For Private Jet
Politico: Price’s Private-Jet Travel Breaks Precedent
In a sharp departure from his predecessors, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price last week took private jets on five separate flights for official business, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars more than commercial travel. The secretary’s five flights, which were scheduled between Sept. 13 and Sept. 15, took him to a resort in Maine where he participated in a Q&A discussion with a health care industry CEO, and to community health centers in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, according to internal HHS documents. (Diamond and Pradhan, 9/19)
In other news on doctors in Washington, D.C. —
Stat: In Congress, A Doctor Becomes A Cancer Patient — And Preaches Candor
Of all the members of Congress, Phil Roe, a Republican from Tennessee, seemed the best prepared for a cancer diagnosis. When it comes to Roe and medicine, it is hard to separate the personal and the professional: He heads the GOP Doctors Caucus. His colleagues, Republicans and Democrats alike, call him “Doc.‘’ ...But Roe also acknowledges that he is a terrible patient — his neurosurgeon, he admitted, still wants to strangle him after his woeful attempts to rest after back surgery last year. So when the call came from his own doctor on that day last July, informing him he had prostate cancer, he was determined to do the right thing. (Mershon, 9/20)
