Change & Transform, Is this Still America?

Is this Still America?

It seems that every day we get an ever clearer idea of what Obama and the Democrats meant when they promised to “change” and “transform” America. Take the dust-up this week between the big Kentucky based insurance company, Humana, and the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, as an example.

Baucus is a powerful man, and he has resources at his disposal to prove it. To considerable fanfare he recently introduced his version of a health care reform bill. It contained a proposed $123 billion in cuts to the very popular Medicare Advantage program. Other powerful Democrats including President Obama and Nancy Pelosi have pointed to the Medicare program as fertile territory where they expect to find hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for their planned health care nirvana.

Therefore, with all this talk of change for Medicare, it seems reasonable that an insurance company such as Humana – and the tens of thousands of their customers - might have more than just a passing interest in what Congress and the President ultimately do.

Humana sent a one page letter to their Medicare Advantage customers pointing out that “if the proposed funding cut levels become law, millions of seniors and disabled individuals could lose benefits and services that make Medicare Advantage health plans so valuable.” Concerned seniors are urged to contact their elected representatives to express concerns.

While this hardly seems the stuff of which revolutions are born, Max Baucus took great offense, calling the letter misleading and confusing. He expressed outrage than anyone would claim his bill would reduce Medicare benefits, even as Doug Elmendorf, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office told Senators yesterday that “the elderly in the private Medicare Advantage plans could see reduced benefits under Baucus’ bill.” Maybe Baucus hadn’t read his own bill.

He fired off a directive to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that holds the regulatory hammer over the head of private companies like Humana. When powerful Senators say “jump,” experienced bureaucrats dependent upon those same Senators for their annual budget appropriations are already in the air.

CMS responded to Baucus by issuing an immediate cease and desist order to Humana on September 18, 2009 demanding they stop all such communications to their clientele including references on the company’s website. CMS takes “this matter very seriously, and based upon the findings of our investigations, will pursue compliance and enforcement actions.”

From the other side of the aisle, an obviously stunned Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell appropriately called the action a “gag order” against not only Humana, but all insurance companies providing Medicare Advantage plans to “shut up..be quiet, and get in line.” McConnell correctly fingered the Baucus/CMS assault as a violation of the Constitutional guarantee of “free speech.”

The Wall Street Journal editorialized with the headline, “Baucus Bludgeons Humana.” The editors open with the observation that, “Political intimidation has always been part of the current Congress’s health-care strategy: ‘If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu’ is tattooed on every lobbyist and industry rep in Washington.” But, even by those harsh standards, Baucus’s attack on Humana is “hard to believe” according to the WSJ.

So this is the real face of the “change” promised to America? These guys will force their changes by taxing, regulating, litigating, and intimidating us out of our freedom and into submission. For my part, they can keep the change…I want my country back.