Trump Administration shifts funds away from comprehensive sex ed classes to those that teach abstinence.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

The Trump administration will shift federal funding aimed at reducing teen pregnancy rates to programs that teach abstinence. 

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Friday the availability of grants through the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, (TPPP) a grant program created under former President Obama that funds organizations and programs working to reduce teen pregnancy rates. 

Trump's HHS announced, however, that unlike under the Obama administration, grants will be geared toward organizations that teach abstinence education to teens instead of the comprehensive sex ed approach the previous administration supported. In a funding announcement released Friday, the administration announced two tiers of funds for the TPP program. 

"Projects will clearly communicate that teen sex is a risk behavior for both the physical consequences of pregnancy and sexual transmitted infections; as well as sociological, economic and other related risks," the funding announcement reads. "Both risk avoidance and risk reduction approaches can and should include skills associated with helping youth delay sex as well as skills to help those youth already engaged in sexual risk to return toward risk-free choices in the future."

Well I think we can all look forward to a dramatic spike in teen pregnancy. 

As the product of a teen pregnancy, I can attest to the fact that the "just say no" approach is deeply flawed.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price offers to pay a fraction of the taxpayer money he wasted on private planes. Update!

Courtesy of ABC News:  

Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price said Thursday that he regrets his numerous trips aboard private aircraft and pledged to reimburse the government for the cost of his seat, a promise that will only cover a fraction of the estimated costs, according to a source familiar with the plan. 

In a statement, Price said that he "regret[s] the concerns that [his official travel] has raised regarding the use of taxpayer dollars" and that he "will write a personal check to the U.S. Treasury for the expenses of my travel on private charter planes." 

"The taxpayers won't pay a dime for my seat on those planes,” said Price. 

The source with knowledge of Price's intentions said that the secretary will pay $51,887.31, about 13 percent of the $400,000 that Politico estimated was spent on as many as 26 chartered flights. Price confirmed that he would pay for his "portion" of the total cost in an interview with Fox News Thursday afternoon. 

"All of my political career I've fought for the taxpayers," said Price in his statement. "It is clear to me that in this case, I was not sensitive enough to my concern for the taxpayer. I know as well as anyone that the American people want to know that their hard-earned dollars are being spent wisely by government officials.

If Price REALLY cared about the taxpayers then he would be digging much deeper to find the funds to repay the actual cost of these flights, which ONLY took to the air on his behalf, instead of attempting to weasel out of taking full responsibility for wasting our money.

By the way that $400,000 estimate from Politico may be a little low, as other news outlets have suggested that Price may have wasted almost a million dollars of taxpayer money on private flights to places easily accessible by commercial air.

It should be mentioned that Obama's HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, only used a private plane ONE time. And that was to reach a remote village in Alaska, and I can confirm that there is literally no other way to get out into the bush than to charter a plane.

For his part Trump is apparently pissed off that this story is making headlines right now, and has made some noise about firing Price.

However if he does so he is only exposing his own hypocrisy, since it has been well reported that Trump himself is costing the American taxpayers multiple millions of dollars to pay for the Secret Service security to protect his extended family in a number of locations, and to pay for his own frequent trips to Trump properties like Mar a Lago.

And there are other outrageous expenses coming from this administration, one of which we documented just yesterday concerning that story about the EPA administrator and his $25,000 "cone of Silence."

Let's face it, Donald Trump did not win the White House to "drain the swamp."

He won the White House to bankrupt the country.

Update: Price has now resigned.

How many members of the administration is this now? 

HHS to take federal health insurance exchange websites offline for most Sundays during the upcoming open enrollment sessions. You know, because that's so helpful.

HHS will take https://t.co/hHpJTTaZfz offline nearly every Sunday from 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. of open enrollment, per presentation sent to me. pic.twitter.com/0n5cZ9ENOK

— Sarah Kliff (@sarahkliff) September 22, 2017

Courtesy of HuffPo:

The Trump administration plans to shut down the federal health insurance exchange for 12 hours during all but one Sunday in the upcoming open enrollment season. 

The shutdown will occur from 12 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET on every Sunday except Dec. 10. 

The Department of Health and Human Services will also shut down the federal exchange — healthcare.gov — overnight on the first day of open enrollment, Nov. 1. More than three dozen states use that exchange for their marketplaces. 

HHS officials disclosed this information Friday during a webinar with community groups that help people enroll.

So if they cannot simply repeal Obamacare out right, plan B is to sabotage it from within.

Just like the Republicans to undermine government effectiveness so that they can then claim that government is completely ineffective. 

Now we are hearing that ousted US Attorney Preet Bharara was also investigating new HHS Secretary Tom Price. And the plot thickens.

Courtesy of TPM: 

Ousted U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was overseeing an investigation into current Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s stock trades when he was fired, according to an unnamed source cited by ProPublica Friday. 

According to a source “familiar with the office,” ProPublica reported, Bharara’s employees were looking into stock trades made by Price, seemingly those that came to light during his confirmation process. 

Before and during his confirmation hearing, Democrats accused Price of abusing his office for his own personal benefit, perhaps illegally. 

Price bought stock in Zimmer Biomet the same month, March 2016, that he introduced legislation to delay the implementation of a measure that would have negatively affected that company.

So to be clear Preet Bharara was investigating Fox News for paying hush money to keep employees quiet about sexual harassment,  Donald Trump's ties to Russia, AND accusations of insider trading by the new HHS Secretary?

Oh yeah, he clearly had to go.

Donald Trump appoints an ardent anti-Obamacare Congressman as his Secretary of Health, and seems determined to adopt an anti-climate change platform. And so it begins.

Courtesy of Yahoo News:

President-elect Donald Trump has selected Georgia Rep. Tom Price, a leading critic of President Barack Obama's sweeping health care law, to head the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a person familiar with the decision. 

If confirmed by the Senate, Price will play a central role in Republican efforts to repeal and replace the current health care law. Trump has pledged to move quickly on overhauling the landmark measure, but has been vague about what he hopes to see in a replacement bill. 

The president-elect has said he favors keeping provisions that allow young people to stay on their parents' health insurance and that prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.

That last part will of course be impossible if Trump does away with the insurance mandate, but hey that's the kind of attention to detail that he and his followers simply cannot be bothered with.

Really all you need to know about Congressman Price is that this guy is over he moon at his appointment.

.@RepTomPrice has made health care his life's work. He is the absolute perfect choice for HHS Secretary.

My full statement ↓ pic.twitter.com/CBMmN2EvIT

— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) November 29, 2016

Yeah if Paul "Let's kill Medicare" Ryan is for putting this guy in charge of HHS, then you know he should NEVER be put in charge of HHS.

But hey, that is not even the worst news coming out of the Trump transition team.

Courtesy of Think Progress:  

Trump is appointing countless climate science deniers to key positions, which tells you vastly more about what he believes and what he’ll do than his latest semi-coherent ramblings. As I wrote last week, Trump’s repetition of the phrase “open mind” during his Times interview was meant to distract from his constant repetition of long-debunked denier talking points. 

Priebus confirmed Trump wasn’t being forthright with the Times, telling Wallace, “As far as this issue on climate change — the only thing he [Trump] was saying after being asked a few questions about it is, look, he’ll have an open mind about it but he has his default position, which most of it is a bunch of bunk, but he’ll have an open mind and listen to people.”

You know having an "open mind"  and a "default position" are two mutually exclusive ideas.

Climate change is no longer something that somebody should have to maintain an "open mind" about. It is clearly here, and it is clearly already causing devastation all around he planet.

The fact that Donald Trump is still clumsily finding his way around these topics is just another indication that he is chronically unfit for this job, and a signal to the rest of the world that America is no longer a country on which they can rely for guidance and assistance in dealing with the vast number of problems facing us all.

Sarah Palin accuses the government of instituting the "death panels" that she has been warning us about, when in fact they are doing the exact opposite.

So this was posted on the Wasilla Wendigo's Facebook page as about nineteen hours ago:  

The government will bend the rules left and right to harass targeted taxpayers, conservative patriots, selected journalists, etc., but it will strictly exercise inconsistent and subjective rules to deny a child a shot at life. And they called us liars when we spoke of “death panels” – faceless bureaucrats coming between you and your doctor to make life and death decisions about a loved one’s survival. It doesn’t sound so far fetched anymore, does it? 

- Sarah Palin

After that she links to this truly heartbreaking story about a young girl in  Philadelphia who desperately needs a new lung, but due to policies in place is only in line to receive a child's young but not in line to receive an adult lung if one becomes available.

In this hospital there are three other children just as sick and also in need of a lung transplant, and if an exception were made, and this little girl was put on the adult list, she would jump ahead of 40 adult patients also waiting for a lung transplant.

Now look as a parent I find this story incredibly upsetting and if I were this girl's parents I would be moving heaven and earth to save my child, and begging for preferential treatment to save her life, because THAT IS WHAT PARENTS DO!

I do not fault he parents at all.

However for Sarah Palin to take this and turn it into an opportunity to attack the administration is incredibly low, especially since what she is suggesting is to do the EXACT thing that he accused the Affordable Care Act of doing!

This was how Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius responded about this case:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a congressional panel Tuesday that medical experts should make those decisions.

Get it? She said that the medical experts at the hospital make those decisions, NOT the Obama administration of government types.  So IF she intervened as the parents are asking her to do, she would be moving this little girl to the top of the list and essentially moving everybody else down a slot.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't THAT be the government choosing who lived or died, due to political pressure rather than following the guidelines that are in place to provide equal access to care for all?

And isn't THAT the very definition of the "death panels" that Sarah Palin warned all of America about?

The government choosing who lives and who dies. Now where have I heard THAT before?