On Wednesday, the Senate voted 57-38 to confirm Eric D. Hargan as deputy secretary of Health and Human Services. He is expected to assume the role as acting secretary of the department, currently held by Don Wright, who assumed the role last Saturday following the resignation of Secretary Tom Price. Hargan was nominated for the position in April to serve under Price and received a full committee hearing in June. Hargan has worked closely with the Trump Administration, initially serving in the HHS transition team, then as a senior adviser in the Office of General Counsel, where he had an active role in regulatory discussions. He previously served at HHS in the George W. Bush Administration from 2003 to 2007 as deputy general counsel, chief of staff to the deputy secretary and acting deputy secretary. A permanent replacement for the secretary has not yet been announced.

Hargan’s confirmation came less than a week after Price resigned in the wake of reports that, as early as this spring, he was misusing taxpayer funding for personal use of private and military jets. The cost of those trips was estimated at $1 million—between $400,000 in domestic and $500,000 in international travel. Within days of the news breaking on these trips, Price voluntarily submitted his resignation to President Trump in an effort to avoid any distraction to the work of the administration. This week, Price wrote a personal check to the Treasury Department for $51,887, the equivalent of the expense for his seat on those flights.

Price had been dogged by ethics questions almost as soon as he was nominated, which culminated in a contentious 52-47 party-line vote for his confirmation in February. During the confirmation process, Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee made several accusations, including “potential STOCK Act violations, illegal insider trading and other conflicts of interest.” Price had underreported the value of his stake in the biotech firm Innate Immunotherapeutics, initially claiming a value of between $50,000 and$100,000, later revised to between $100,000 and$250,000, but with a market value of more than $689,000. Price had also traded more than $300,000 in shares of roughly 40 healthcare stocks while working on relevant healthcare legislation potentially impacting those companies over a four-year period.

Price had been expected to play a major role in crafting legislation to repeal and replace the ACA as well as regulatory authority to advance changes under their “three-bucket” approach to health reform. Price had considerable regulatory authority to make changes to the healthcare law, with the ACA including more than 1,400 references to “the secretary shall,” giving permission for him to rewrite much of how the law had been implemented under the Obama Administration. Price had largely held off on making any significant regulatory changes during his tenure, preferring instead to wait on Congress to pass a reconciliation bill to repeal and replace significant portions of the ACA that would provide him with new regulatory authority. But with the demise of the Graham-Cassidy plan last week, this never came to fruition, limiting the overall impact that Price had on the agency. His most significant contribution is likely to be a draft strategic plan that called for a significant increase in reliance on faith-based organizations.

NAHU had worked closely with Dr. Price, both in his capacity as a member of Congress representing the 6th District in Georgia and during his time as secretary of HHS. While we are disappointed that we will not be continuing to work with him as we pursue regulatory changes to stabilize the market, we will continue to work with the many other Trump appointees and career staff at HHS with whom we have built relationships, some spanning decades of service to the government. We will continue these efforts to make regulatory changes to improve the law for agents, brokers, employers and individuals.