Max Baucus's Thuggish Behavior

I read Tuesday's lead Wall Street Journal editorial with shock and disgust.

The facts are these. Humana Inc., a health care insurer, sent its members a communication alerting them to Senator Baucus' bill's planned effects on the members' health insurance plans, and urged them to contact their Congressional Representatives to express their feelings on the matter.

As the editorial notes,

"Mr. Baucus took it as a declaration of war. He complained to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal health-care agency, which on Friday duly ordered Humana to cease and desist. CMS claimed the mailer was "misleading and confusing" and told the company it has opened an official probe as to whether the mailer violated laws about how the insurers that manage Advantage plans are allowed to communicate with their customers, as well as other federal statutes."

Is there any difference, anymore, between Congress and your local organized crime family? Both use coercion and extract money from you, without your freely-given consent. Both claim to "protect" you, but end up usually living better than you do, on your tithes.

In this case, Baucus would seem to be acting in violation of the First Amendment. And, one would hope, any Medicare legislation which curtails a provider's ability to communicate freely with their members is itself unconstitutional.

What's obviously troubling is how a US Senator, and the machinery of the federal government, so quickly conspire to gag true speech which they do not like.

As the Journal editorial points out,

"In fact, the Baucus draft legislation slashes $123 billion over the next decade from Medicare Advantage, which Democrats hate despite the fact that almost one-fourth of beneficiaries have chosen it over traditional fee-for-service Medicare.

Democrats say that insurers are "overpaid," but the cuts- as Humana correctly noted- mean that seniors may lose this coverage.

Mr. Baucus doesn't want seniors to be educated about these facts, and obviously he's willing to use his enormous power to punish any private company that doesn't affirm his, well, creative version of reality. Nearly half of Humana's yearly revenue comes from Medicare Advantage, and the insurer says that it is complying in full with the CMS investigation. Yesterday, the agency also barred all Advantage insurers from providing similar information to their beneficiaries.

This episode neatly shows how all U.S. health care will operate if Mr. Baucus's bill becomes law."

And there you have it. Government by intimidation and muzzling of any dissent from the private sector. Punishment of free speech by unleashing federal investigators on those so foolish as to oppose a powerful US Senator.

You'd hope you were reading about some banana republic, but you're not. Or, maybe you are now. That appears to be where the United States is headed, or, evidently, has already arrived.