The Department of Health and Human Services placed a gag order preventing private health insurance companies from communicating to their Medicare Advantage customers how the pending health care legislation, if passed, could impact them. Last week, Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Chairman, ordered Medicare regulators to investigate and likely punish Humana Inc. for sending out a mailer to its Advantage plan customers (senior citizens) that mislead and “confused beneficiaries.”
Mr. Blum, the acting director of a regulatory office in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), informed Humana of its investigations, and further banned all Advantage contractors from informing their customers what Congress is currently debating and discussing regarding health care.
But it gets better. Who is Mr. Blum? The former senior aide to Mr. Baucus, former health care policy adviser on Obama’s transition team, and now the acting director of the CMS. Mr. Blum’s former boss, Max Baucus, is the one who originally asked the CMS to investigate the companies critical of the health care bill.
Wait…better still. The letter Humana sent to its customers warned that Democratic plans to reform health care could result in benefit cuts, conclusions that the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) supports with its own assertions made to Max Baucus’ committee. On Tuesday, the CBO director, Douglas Elmendorf, told the Senate Finance Committee that its plan to cut $123 billion from Medicare Advantage (the program that gives almost ¼ of all seniors’ private health insurance options) will result in lower benefits and almost 2.7 million seniors losing their coverage.
Baucus believes that Humana is purposefully misleading seniors in just another scare tactic. I’m sure it has nothing to do with Humana, a private insurance company, tending to the needs and interests of its own customers, and honestly informing them of the damaging democratic plans to overhaul health care. Since the Obama administration has been so welcoming to opposing points of views, not only meticulously reviewing the Republican versions of health care reform, but also responding to the concerns of millions of American citizens, I’m sure the recent gag order coming from his own appointee to silence unfavorable statistics is simply a coincidence.
And then we have the Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons (AARP) who has spent millions of dollars on its TV ad campaign and newsletters to its members, including eight million direct-mail letters sent over Labor Day. On its own website, AARP claims that the proposed health care reform will not in any way cut benefits or increase expenses for seniors. AARP markets its version of the Advantage plan, through United HealthCare, and boasts 1.7 million customers. And by the way, AARP happens to be one of the most powerful lobbying groups on Capitol Hill.
I’m sure their letter from Mr. Blum just got lost in the mail, even though our post office is an exceptional example of government funds well managed and budgeted. Just ask Obama.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204488304574431212166204156.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/09/24/hhs-1997-prohibiting-hmos-informing-clients-pending-legislation-viola
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