"I made a provocative and rhetorical comment as part of a free-flowing conversation which has been taken completely out of context," said Betty Price, he wife of former HHS Secretary Tom Price. Betty Price (front) is a Georgia state legislator. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo Price's wife defends AIDS quarantine remark as 'provocative'

Betty Price, the wife of former HHS Secretary Tom Price, is defending her comment about quarantining people with HIV as an attempt to be provocative about a public health crisis.

The physician and Georgia state legislator says she does not favor quarantining people with HIV or AIDS.


"I made a provocative and rhetorical comment as part of a free-flowing conversation which has been taken completely out of context." she said in a statement to the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Saturday. "I do not support a quarantine in this public health challenge and dilemma of undertreated HIV patients. I do, however, wish to light a fire under all of us with responsibility in the public health arena."

Her comments last week at a state House Study Committee meeting were videotaped and widely circulated.

"I don’t want to say the quarantine word, but I guess I just said it,” Price said then.

"Is there an ability, since I would guess that public dollars are expended heavily in prophylaxis and treatment of this condition," she said. "So, we have a public interest in curtailing the spread. What would you advise, or are there any methods legally that we could do, that would curtail the spread."

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On Saturday, Price stressed she has worked in public health for years and had made the comments during a discussion of why there were so many people in Georgia who were not getting treatment and posed a risk of spreading the virus to others. Georgia has one of the highest rates of new HIV infections in the country.

She is married to Tom Price, who resigned as HHS secretary last month amid multiple federal inquiries and growing criticism spurred by POLITICO reports of his use of private and government planes for travel.

