Witness the prescient wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote, “Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.”
Now consider the story of HHS v. Forest Laboratories.
When the Wall Street Journal pointed out the utter outrageousness of HHS threat of debarring Forest Labs CEO Harold Solomon (Kathleen Spitzer, 5/2/11), the department sent a BSD letter to the editor (if you don’t know what these letter to the editor restating, for all intents and purposes, “look out, there’s a new sheriff in town.” (PS/ If you are not familiar with the acronym “BSD,” please ask a friend to explain.)
But the Journal was right and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was wrong.
The gist of the Journal editorial can be summed up in these two excepted paragraphs:
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.
The hammer on Forest Labs "reinforces everybody's worst fears—that 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.
But, just like any other blustering bully, when you stand up for what’s right – the bully folds like a house of cards.
On Friday, HHS dropped its foolish efforts to force the resignation of Harold Solomon after protests from the company and major business groups.
In another letter, this time to Mr. Solomon, the office of the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services said, "Based on a review of information in our file, and consideration of the information your attorneys provided to us both in writing and in an in-person meeting, we have decided to close this case."
Oops. Sorry about that.
A statement from the HHS inspector general's office Friday said: "We remain committed to investigating and, when appropriate, sanctioning executives" who engage in health-care fraud. "This includes individuals who directly committed fraud as well as executives who were in a position of responsibility at the time of the fraud.”
As they should. And when the fraud is an attempt by the current residents of the Humphrey Building to cow healthcare companies into obsequious servitude – they should, equally and publically and aggressively, be called to task.
