Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia Republican and physician picked by President-elect Donald Trump to oversee the health and availability of essential human services to all Americans, belongs to a medical association whose unconventional views are certain to raise questions during his confirmation hearings next year.
Trump nominated Price, re-elected last month to a seventh term, to become secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
An orthopedic surgeon, he is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, whose 5,000 members consider the group a nonpartisan professional organization dedicated to “preserving the sanctity of the patient-physician relationship and the practice of private medicine.”
It has long been at odds with mainstream medical groups, and critics say it promotes scientifically discredited theories, including that abortion causes breast cancer and that vaccines can cause serious disabilities.
In 2005 the association accused immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally of causing a spike in leprosy cases. It was subsequently debunked.
We have had more contact with (Rep. Price) than most other members . . . because he has been on our side and he has been a physician.
Dr. Jane Orient, executive director, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
It was also one of the groups that sued to force the release the names of those on then-first lady Hillary Clinton’s health care task force in the 1990s. In 2003, the group filed an amicus brief for the public release of photos taken of former Clinton administration deputy counsel Vincent Foster following his 1993 suicide.
It posted an article before President Barack Obama’s election in 2008 questioning whether the Democratic presidential candidate was practicing a “covert form of hypnosis” to court voters. It said the posting was not an official position but was designed to “stimulate an interesting discussion.”
The association also strongly opposed the Obama administration’s effort to overhaul health care during the debates over the Affordable Care Act in 2009 and 2010.
Neither Price nor the Trump campaign returned a request for comment.
Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the association, said Price was good choice to lead the Health and Human Services Department because “he been a practicing physician so he knows what the impact of rules and regulations are coming down from Washington and what they mean to a doctor trying to do his job.”
Asked whether her group holds positions that are out of the medical mainstream, she said, “It depends on what the mainstream is.”
Orient said “mainstream” physicians “are very progressive. They were in favor of Obamacare. Certainly they don’t represent the majority of physicians. . . . I suspect more doctors are philosophically on our side, but there’s no way to tell that because a lot are very timid about speaking out because their practices depend on people who may hold different views.”
Orient also said that because her group’s medical publication, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, carried an article on a particular topic did not mean the organization embraced everything in it.
“We believe in open scientific inquiry,” she said. “The articles published in our journal are not the official position of AAPS.”
Dr. Manan Trivedi, president of the National Physicians Alliance, a health research and advocacy group that takes no funding from pharmaceutical companies or medical device manufacturers, said he found it “very alarming” that the potential next federal health secretary was involved with the physicians and surgeons group.
“They have been associated with a lot of the anti-vaccine movement,” he said. “They also have been involved with the out-there theory that President Obama hypnotized folks. Look, there seems to be a culture of not recognizing evidence-based medicine that is a real concern for us.”
Abortion rights groups seized on the connection between Price and the association as they mobilized supporters with a Twitter hashtag, #priceiswrong.