Confirmation hearings: A minefield even in the best of circumstances

We’ve just come through an incredibly difficult and polarizing election where each candidate presented very different ideas for how to move the country forward. Chief among those issues was the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Now that President Trump is sworn in he has begun to act on his campaign pledges, including repealing and replacing the ACA.

Therefore, it is no surprise that any and all utterances about the ACA made by the president and leaders in Congress are urgently sifted through to try and better understand what a repeal may look like, what a new plan may be and when it might happen.

{mosads}This dynamic has been front and center during the confirmation hearings for Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) to become the next Health and Human Services Secretary. Among the many questions, his grilling by senators on both sides focused on what the administration intends to do on the ACA. Having sat in the chair during my own confirmation hearing staring up at the dais, I have an understanding what it is like.

But the reality is that at this point in the Trump administration, or any administration, the details that the Senators and public seek may not exist.

While Rep. Price has provided a broad framework of what they want to do and why, the reality is that those details will be fleshed out during the negotiations between the House and Senate and with the Executive Branch. That’s the way it should be.

No one should forget what happened to the Clinton administration’s health care reform plan when it was publically released. Nearly everyone attacked it based on their interests and we all know the results. It failed. And even if you opposed their plan, the lesson was learned by all.

I was in the same position as Rep. Price in January 2001 when I was asked about the Bush administration’s agenda and I stated that adding a drug benefit to Medicare was at the top of that list.

LIVE: Tom Price’s confirmation hearing for secretary of Health and Human Services https://t.co/shbD7UxvsI pic.twitter.com/dS9zmkKdbP

— The Hill (@thehill) January 18, 2017

As soon as I said that, I was pushed for details about what a drug benefit would look like. Truth is, while we had some ideas, we also knew that getting such a plan adopted meant we had to work with Congress and let them take the lead. So I was fairly general during my confirmation hearings, which made me a bit uncomfortable as my natural inclination was to go into depth on each and every question. But I knew that doing so would not serve the White House in the long run.

The result of this strategy was that after a difficult debate and votes, Congress passed the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA), which by almost any measure has been a highly successful reform to Medicare and a very important benefit for America’s seniors. The MMA has directly led to an improvement in the health of our country’s seniors.

In addition, U.S. senators, as we are witnessing, use the opportunity of a nomination to grill nominees about a host of questions; some specific to their state, others about a program they feel strongly about, or in many cases they simply wish to make a political statement; and as a result confirmation hearings can be contentious.

So, as the Finance Committee, and hopefully the entire Senate, considers Rep. Price’s nomination to be the next HHS Secretary, remember, he truly wants to work with you to make changes to the ACA that the administration thinks are necessary for this program to better serve the American people.

But he knows, as do most Congress watchers, that if he and/or the White House came out with a detailed plan at this point in time, such a plan might fail in the end. And if there is one thing most of us can agree on about the ACA, it must be fixed — one way or another — if we want it to continue to serve the American people.

Tommy G. Thompson was the 42nd and longest serving governor of Wisconsin (1987-2001) and the 19th secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services for President George W. Bush.

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