Obama's Thug Politics

Michael Barone has a great column out today about the Obama Administration's disgraceful bullying tactics against the health care industry. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently wrote a letter to the president of the chief lobbying organization for private health insurers, telling her that "there will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases." It seems that health insurance companies are raising their premiums significantly in response to ObamaCare, which imposes significant new costs and regulations on them. If anyone on Obama's team knew anything about how a free market economy works, they would be aware that forcing health insurers to provide more benefits leads to additional costs, which these insurers will pass on to consumers in order to stay profitable. Opponents of ObamaCare pointed out that this would be the inevitable result of the Democratic legislation for a year now. However, according to Sebelius, such premium increases are unacceptable because "according to our analysis and those of some industry and academic experts, any potential premium impact...will be minimal." Never mind basic economic principles -- the government has authoritatively declared that your costs will not go up!

So what exactly does "zero tolerance" mean? (Have you heard Obama's Administration use those words about Iran or Hamas or Hugo Chavez lately? Funny how American health insurers get less benefit of the doubt than Islamic terrorists and hostile foreign governments.) Well, Sebelius explains herself. She says that her department will issue regulations to force a "state or federal review of all potentially unreasonable rate increases." (That word "potentially" really narrows down the field!) And adds, "We will also keep track of insurers with a record of unjustified rate increases: those plans may be excluded from health insurance Exchanges in 2014."

Let's put Sebelius's Soviet-style approach in ordinary English. Here's what she's really saying: "We control health care in this country now. We determine who gets to participate in the health insurance market and who doesn't, and if you don't set the premiums we tell you to set, we will put you out of business. We know that raising premiums and telling consumers why you are raising those premiums is not against the law -- nevertheless we have a 'zero tolerance' policy for dissent or criticism of our legislation. We will let you know when the First Amendment applies and when it doesn't. Ground Zero Mosque - yes. Criticizing ObamaCare - no."

As Barone points out, "The threat to use government regulation to destroy or harm a business because the owners disagree with government officials is thuggery." Of course, this is the same administration that forced GM and Chrysler to reorganize outside of the normal rules of bankruptcy to protect their union allies, and the same administration that tried to bully Fox News by singling them out for exclusion from an interview with a Cabinet official. They are hungry for control -- of the media, the automakers, the financial services industry, the health insurance industry, the energy industry, etc. Control means the right to bully and intimidate people and companies into doing what you want. The Soviets would have been proud.

It's telling that while Sebelius is attempting to silence health insurers who are criticizing the health care bill, not a SINGLE Democratic congressman or senator in a competitive race is bragging about voting for the health care bill. According to Barone, no Democrat running for Congress has even praised or defended the bill since April. They wouldn't be running from it if they didn't know it was an utter failure. But if you're a health insurer, you'd better keep your mouth shut. Or else.