Worst Health Care Revolving Door Case So Far? - From Lobbyist to Acting Secretary of Department of Health and Human Services

Once again, you just cannot make this stuff up.

Last week we posted our latest revolving door roundup, one of many we have done during the Trump administration.  At the time we noted that a lobbyist, Mr Eric D Hargan, at Greenberg Taurig Alston & Bird, had been nominated to be Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

Wikepedia provides a little more information about his past lobbying employment.

Hargan left the government in 2007 and joined the health law department of law firm McDermott Will & Emery. Hargan joined the health and FDA business development practice of law firm Greenberg Traurig in June 2010. He is a shareholder in Greenberg Traurig's Health & FDA Business Practice.

Greenberg Taurig Austin & Bird has done considerable lobbying for health care corporations.  We previously wrote that it "has earned more than $4.4 million lobbying so far this year for health care companies and trade groups including Novartis AG, Verax Biomedical, the American Hospital Association, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and Aetna...."

Prior to his most recent lobbying work, Mr Hargan was a corporate lawyer, and then served in several purely administrative positions in DHHS during the George W Bush administration.  He also apparently served on the Trump transition team (per Wikipedia). 

I can see nothing that suggests he has any direct experience or expertise in actual health care, public health or biomedical science.  

Today, as reported, for example, by CBS, the Trump administration announced he will be acting Secretary of DHHS, the most powerful government health care official.  By the way, so far today, the brief pieces on this nomination (see also Politico, CNN, The Hill) have not mentioned his lobbying background, or lack of medical, health care, public health, or biomedical science experience. 

As we noted in our last, very recent post on the revolving door in health care, candidate Trump promised to "drain the swamp" in Washington, and specifically to avoid appointing lobbyists to government positions that could influence the fortunes of the companies for which they lobbied.

Yet here is a flagrant example of a lobbyist appointed to the highest US government health care position.  We have often discussed the revolving door affecting health care.  I believe this is the worst example so far I have seen.  We will have a man most expert in pushing policies to improve the fortunes of large health care corporations and their management, but who apparently knows little about health care, medicine, public health, or biomedical science, and has no record showing he particularly cares about patients' and the public's health.  This man is now in charge of the health care and public health operations of the US government. 

 Mr Trump, at least this doctor asks, have you no sense of decency?

So, to repeat in anguish what I have said before, most recently last week. 

The revolving door is a species of conflict of interest. Worse, some experts have suggested that the revolving door is in fact corruption.  As we noted here, the experts from the distinguished European anti-corruption group U4 wrote,

The literature makes clear that the revolving door process is a source of valuable political connections for private firms. But it generates corruption risks and has strong distortionary effects on the economy, especially when this power is concentrated within a few firms.

The ongoing parade of people transiting the revolving door from industry to the Trump administration once again suggests how the revolving door may enable certain of those with private vested interests to have excess influence, way beyond that of ordinary citizens, on how the government works, and that the country is still increasingly being run by a cozy group of insiders with ties to both government and industry. This has been termed crony capitalism. The latest cohort and now this most flagrant example of revolving door transits suggests that regulatory capture is likely to become much worse in the near future.

So, as we have said before [before, before...] The continuing egregiousness of the revolving door in health care shows how health care leadership can play mutually beneficial games, regardless of the their effects on patients' and the public's health.  Once again, true health care reform would cut the ties between government and corporate leaders and their cronies that have lead to government of, for and by corporate executives rather than the people at large.