Oh ok, here’s 12.5 cents on the dollar
Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, surprised and a little hurt at the reaction to his habit of chartering planes every time he wants to go anywhere, even if it’s to Philly and the train would get there faster, says he’ll pay us back for the cost of his seat. Not for the cost of the flights, mind you, just for his seat. That would be a fair arrangement if a seat had been all it took to get him there, but the point is that he chartered whole entire planes, so that’s what he owes us for, minus the cost of a normal ticket.
He says he would also like to keep his job, please.
In a statement released on Thursday, he said, “Today, I will write a personal check to the US Treasury for the expenses of my travel on private charter planes. The taxpayers won’t pay a dime for my seat on those planes.”
The expense for his seat on those planes comes out to $51,887.31, according to an HHS spokesperson.
Politico has reported that the total cost of the private jets Price flew on was more than $400,000 and included trips to places where he has friends and family. Price is not covering the cost for support staff and others who flew with him on those charter planes, staff who otherwise would have flown commercial.
But hey, he’s paying 1/8 of the cost, so can’t we just accept that and be grateful? Why are we so grudging?
“What the Secretary has done is say that while all of this travel was approved by legal and HHS officials, the Secretary has heard the taxpayers’ concerns and wants to be responsive to them,” the HHS spokesperson said. “That’s why he’s taking the unprecedented step of reimbursing the government for his share of the travel.”
Ooh, special! Only, the trouble is, all the chartering of planes to go visit family is also unprecedented, and it came first, and he’s not paying it all back. So.
In his statement, Price made it clear he hopes to keep his job. “I have spent forty years both as a doctor and in public service putting people first,” Price said. “It has been my personal honor to serve the American people, and I look forward to continuing that service.”
But he’s working for Trump, so it’s not possible to believe that thing about putting people first. Sorry.
Forty years a doctor and public servant, yet just two minutes working for Trump was enough for his corrupt nature to come to the fore.
How many more are going to fall before they realise that just because the boss can do it with impunity and without consequences, it doesn’t mean they can, too?
Or it could be that his corruption was never quite so large, and it managed to go unnoticed in the past. Many a doctor has padded their bill with services not delivered, knowing most patients won’t check and those that do can be mollified with a “oh, dear, computer error, yes, of course we’ll fix that for you dear”. For the most part, insurance companies pay, because it would often cost them more to investigate every charge than to pay the false ones. Or they deny everything, and when the insured complains, they can verify what services are done (and if the insured doesn’t complain, but just sucks it up and pays the bill, so much the better).
I do not believe that corruption of this magnitude suddenly springs on someone just overnight by exposure to a big, corrupt, egotistical toddler. I think if he had been a model of integrity (1) it would have taken longer, with a bit of a struggle, even if only for show; and (2) he would never have been appointed by Trump in the first place.
That’s pretty much what I meant, iknklast, in my own, clumsy way. He might have been ‘cautiously corrupt’ for 40 years but two minutes of Trump had him thinking that caution was no longer necessary.
What I can’t decide is whether he’d assumed that Trump had his back (could he be that naive?), or he thought that with all the focus on Trump, nobody would be paying attention to the minions filling their boots in the background..