As the view of the proper role of government is a regular topic on the board, I wonder if any who read this article in today's WSJ find this campaign by the Obama adminstration appropriate...
...and how it applies to the question of where, on the political spectrum, this government fits.
1."Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius ...latest attack, on the CEO of Forest Laboratories,...HHS this month sent a letter to 83-year-old Forest Labs CEO Howard Solomon, announcing it would henceforth refuse to do business with him. What earned Mr. Solomon the blackball? Well, nothing that he didas admitted even by HHS.
2. ... allegations were among a rash of government suits claiming that marketing to doctors common among drug companies amounted to fraud against Medicare and Medicaid. The charges were odd given their implication that major companies would be dumb enough to try to hoodwink their biggest customer. The charges also had a political flavor as an attempt to blame drug companies, rather than the fee-for-service design of the federal programs, for runaway costs.
3. The feds have rarely invoked this awesome power, given the potential for coercive abuse. But Mrs. Sebelius seems bent on making it more common policy and says she can employ it even against executives who had no knowledge of an employee's misconduct. A year ago Mrs. Sebelius used it to dismiss the CEO of a small drugmaker in St. Louis.
4. Losing the federal government as a customer is potentially crippling to a drug company.
HHS says its action is about holding corporate CEOs accountable, but it looks more like the Administration's latest bid to intimidate the health-care industry into doing its bidding on prices, regulations and political support for ObamaCare. This is the same agency that has threatened insurers with exclusion from new state-run health exchanges if they raise their premiums more than Mrs. Sebelius wants, or if they spread what she deems to be "misinformation" about the President's health bill.
5. The hammer on Forest Labs "reinforces everybody's worst fearsthat this Administration won't do business with anybody that doesn't completely agree with its policy initiatives. Not only will it refuse to even have the argument, it will actively destroy these people," says Peter Pitts, a former Food and Drug Administration official who now runs the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. "
Review & Outlook: Kathleen Spitzer - WSJ.com
"Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775
...and how it applies to the question of where, on the political spectrum, this government fits.
1."Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius ...latest attack, on the CEO of Forest Laboratories,...HHS this month sent a letter to 83-year-old Forest Labs CEO Howard Solomon, announcing it would henceforth refuse to do business with him. What earned Mr. Solomon the blackball? Well, nothing that he didas admitted even by HHS.
2. ... allegations were among a rash of government suits claiming that marketing to doctors common among drug companies amounted to fraud against Medicare and Medicaid. The charges were odd given their implication that major companies would be dumb enough to try to hoodwink their biggest customer. The charges also had a political flavor as an attempt to blame drug companies, rather than the fee-for-service design of the federal programs, for runaway costs.
3. The feds have rarely invoked this awesome power, given the potential for coercive abuse. But Mrs. Sebelius seems bent on making it more common policy and says she can employ it even against executives who had no knowledge of an employee's misconduct. A year ago Mrs. Sebelius used it to dismiss the CEO of a small drugmaker in St. Louis.
4. Losing the federal government as a customer is potentially crippling to a drug company.
HHS says its action is about holding corporate CEOs accountable, but it looks more like the Administration's latest bid to intimidate the health-care industry into doing its bidding on prices, regulations and political support for ObamaCare. This is the same agency that has threatened insurers with exclusion from new state-run health exchanges if they raise their premiums more than Mrs. Sebelius wants, or if they spread what she deems to be "misinformation" about the President's health bill.
5. The hammer on Forest Labs "reinforces everybody's worst fearsthat this Administration won't do business with anybody that doesn't completely agree with its policy initiatives. Not only will it refuse to even have the argument, it will actively destroy these people," says Peter Pitts, a former Food and Drug Administration official who now runs the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest. "
Review & Outlook: Kathleen Spitzer - WSJ.com
"Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775