WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has nominated a Republican lawyer who was as soon as accused of mishandling taxpayer funds and has a historical past of launching investigations towards abortion clinics to guide the Division of Well being and Human Providers’ Workplace of Inspector Normal.
If confirmed by the Senate, Thomas March Bell will oversee fraud, waste and abuse audits of the Medicare and Medicaid packages, which spend greater than $1 trillion yearly.
Bell at present serves as normal counsel for Home Republicans and has labored for GOP politicians and congressional workplaces for many years. The president’s nomination is a openly political one for a job that has lengthy been considered as nonpartisan and focuses largely on accounting for and ferreting out fraud in a number of the nation’s greatest spending packages.
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Bell was terminated from his function at Virginia’s Division of Environmental High quality in 1997 after a state audit confirmed he improperly approved a virtually $8,000 cost to the company’s former spokesman, in response to Washington Put up reporting on the time.
He was workers director for Home Republicans’ 2016 investigation into Deliberate Parenthood, which affords abortion, contraception and different household planning providers at clinics across the nation. That controversial panel Bell spearheaded appeared into Deliberate Parenthood’s use of fetal tissue for medical analysis. In the course of the first Trump administration, Bell’s job on the HHS Workplace of Civil Rights drew rebuke from Democrats.
When Trump started his second time period, he instantly ousted a dozen authorities watchdogs, together with the HHS inspector normal. Watchdogs sometimes keep on when administrations change, and Congress is meant to obtain discover when a president removes them. Eight inspectors normal have sued over their mass firing and requested to be reinstated.
Bell referred a request for remark to the White Home, which didn’t instantly reply.
The HHS inspector normal is also liable for investigating hospitals and insurers and guaranteeing they following laws. The workplace has the ability to implement stiff penalties. Inspector generals are considered as unbiased from the businesses they police.
— Amanda Seitz
