Orthopedic and Spine Industry Leader to Know: Congressman Tom Price

Former orthopedic surgeon Tom Price, MD (R-Ga), was elected to congress in Nov. 2004 and re-elected in 2006 and 2008. Prior to going to Washington, he served four terms in the Georgia state senate, and in 2002 he became the first Republican majority leader in the history of the state.

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As a congressman, Mr. Price has advocated for patient-centered healthcare reform. He introduced the Empowering Patients First Act to make patient satisfaction a priority and provide nationwide access to affordable, quality healthcare.

He has also challenged President Obama’s healthcare reform bill, and in January took the president to task for claiming that Republicans don’t have an alternative to the Democrats’ reform bill.
“What should we tell our constituents who know that Republicans have offered positive solutions and yet continue to hear out of the administration that we’ve offered nothing?” he asked. He also refuted the idea that the American people want a full-scale overhaul of the healthcare system.

Congressman Price is an outspoken critic of the Obama administration and the proposed public option. He said in an opinion piece for Politico that a public option would effectively destroy the private insurance market and end up limiting access to treatments, prescriptions and procedures. He said, “While Democrats continue their predictable call for more bureaucracy in the lives of the American people, there is a positive solution to reforming American health care so that patients are put first. This reform must be built upon dual pillars: a tax structure in which care is accessible to all Americans and a system in which care is truly owned and controlled by patients.”

Congressman Price received his MD from the University of Michigan and completed his residency in orthopedic surgery at Emory University. After graduation, he established an orthopedic clinic north of Atlanta, where he worked for 20 years before returning to Emory University School of Medicine as an assistant professor. He also served as medical director of the orthopedic clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, teaching resident doctors in training, before being elected to Congress.

Read Congressman Price’s opinion piece on healthcare reform in Politico.

Read more Becker’s ASC Review coverage of Tom Price.

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