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If confirmed by the Senate, Thomas March Bell will oversee
fraud, waste and abuse audits of the Medicare and Medicaid
programs, which spend more than $1 trillion annually.
Bell, who was nominated on Monday, currently serves as general
counsel for House Republicans and has worked for GOP politicians
and congressional offices for decades. The president's
nomination is a brazenly political one for a job that has long
been viewed as nonpartisan and focuses largely on accounting for
and ferreting out fraud in some of the nation’s biggest spending
programs.
Bell was terminated from his role at Virginia’s Department of
Environmental Quality in 1997 after a state audit showed he
improperly authorized a nearly $8,000 payment to the agency’s
former spokesman, according to Washington Post reporting at the
time.
He was staff director for House Republicans' 2016 investigation
into Planned Parenthood, which offers abortion, contraception
and other family planning services at clinics around the
country. That controversial panel Bell spearheaded looked into
Planned Parenthood's use of fetal tissue for medical research.
During the first Trump administration, Bell's job at the HHS
Office of Civil Rights drew rebuke from Democrats.
When Trump began his second term, he immediately ousted a dozen
government watchdogs, including the HHS inspector general.
Watchdogs typically stay on when administrations change, and
Congress is supposed to receive notice when a president removes
them. Eight inspectors general have sued over their mass firing
and asked to be reinstated.
Bell referred a request for comment to the White House, which
did not immediately respond.
The HHS inspector general also is responsible for investigating
hospitals and insurers and ensuring they following regulations.
The office has the power to enforce stiff penalties. Inspector
generals are viewed as independent from the agencies they
police.
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