With Tom Price in charge, doctors are winning again in Washington
WASHINGTON — As the Senate was barrelling toward one of its votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act earlier this summer, Tom Price was corralling a small group of doctors into a tiny, dimly lit conference room in a nondescript building in downtown Dallas.
It was, on its surface, another of the health secretary’s many meetings with “victims” of Obamacare — this time with some of the conservative physicians who felt the law was hurting their patients and their own bottom lines. An official readout from Price’s staff trumpeted the eight participating physicians as “witnesses” to Obamacare’s failings.
But that wasn’t Price’s only message to the doctors, according to two participants in the meeting. The health secretary also signaled he would protect the doctors from a raft of regulations that were put in motion by the Obama administration. And although Price, a former orthopedic surgeon, didn’t address specific regulations, he made clear he was listening to the physicians’ complaints about issues like Medicare payment rules and burdensome electronic health record requirements.
“He took it to heart and said, ‘Let’s see where we can get some regulatory relief for these guys, especially the small and rural practices that really need it, so we don’t lose them too,'” said Dr. John Gill, a solo-practice orthopedic surgeon who attended the Dallas meeting. “He was mostly on a listening tour,
