. . . the Department of Health and Human Services issued a gag order this week telling all private companies participating in the Medicare Advantage program to shut up. Violators would face fines and jail time. Forget the First Amendment.

The gag order was issued after Humana Corp. sent a letter to its policyholders who participate in Medicare Advantage telling them the facts about Obamacare’s effect on the program. The companies were ordered “to end immediately all such mailings to beneficiaries and to remove any related materials directed to Medicare enrollees from your website.”

The bureaucrats added this blunt threat: “Please be advised that we take this matter very seriously and, bas...

. . . the Department of Health and Human Services issued a gag order this week telling all private companies participating in the Medicare Advantage program to shut up. Violators would face fines and jail time. Forget the First Amendment.

The gag order was issued after Humana Corp. sent a letter to its policyholders who participate in Medicare Advantage telling them the facts about Obamacare’s effect on the program. The companies were ordered “to end immediately all such mailings to beneficiaries and to remove any related materials directed to Medicare enrollees from your website.”

The bureaucrats added this blunt threat: “Please be advised that we take this matter very seriously and, based upon the findings of our investigation, will pursue compliance and enforcement actions. ….”

Those, my friends, are the words of soft tyranny. How much longer before it becomes a hard tyranny?

History - and the words of progressives themselves - suggest not long. Consider New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s telling admiration for the communist thugs who run the Chinese government:

“One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”

That in a nutshell is the totalitarian temptation that plagues all who would use the power of the state to impose their vision of the good society on the rest of us.

It’s the ever-present Stalin whispering in the progressive ear: “Ignore those reactionary, loud-mouthed, ignorant Tea Party protesters and decree Obamacare, Waxman-Markey, and all the rest of it. Do it now while you have the power!”

And if the dissenters won’t be quiet, Bill Ayers, Obama’s once-and-future colleague, can always dust off his copy of that old Weather Underground plan for FEMA re-education camps in the desert southwest.

You think I exaggerate? Read National Review Editor Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fa...

That in a nutshell is the totalitarian temptation that plagues all who would use the power of the state to impose their vision of the good society on the rest of us.

It’s the ever-present Stalin whispering in the progressive ear: “Ignore those reactionary, loud-mouthed, ignorant Tea Party protesters and decree Obamacare, Waxman-Markey, and all the rest of it. Do it now while you have the power!”

And if the dissenters won’t be quiet, Bill Ayers, Obama’s once-and-future colleague, can always dust off his copy of that old Weather Underground plan for FEMA re-education camps in the desert southwest.

You think I exaggerate? Read National Review Editor Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism,” or historian Paul Johnson’s “Modern Times,” two books without which you cannot understand where we’ve been or where we are headed.

We may have only two more chances to turn things around, in 2010 and 2012.

Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog on washingtonexaminer.com.

Romneycare achieves near-universal coverage mostly by taxing middle-class earners. Massachusetts forces employers to offer workers a minimum level of health benefits or pay an annual $295-per-worker penalty, while individuals who do not obtain coverage face annual penalties as high as $1,068. Since employers pay for employment taxes and employee benefits by reducing wages, Massachusetts residents can face a tax of nearly $1,400. Depending on their income, married couples pay up to twice that.

That is from an article posted here: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10381


basically Obamacare is Romneycare on a national level. I didn't agree with it then, I don't...

Romneycare achieves near-universal coverage mostly by taxing middle-class earners. Massachusetts forces employers to offer workers a minimum level of health benefits or pay an annual $295-per-worker penalty, while individuals who do not obtain coverage face annual penalties as high as $1,068. Since employers pay for employment taxes and employee benefits by reducing wages, Massachusetts residents can face a tax of nearly $1,400. Depending on their income, married couples pay up to twice that.

That is from an article posted here: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10381


basically Obamacare is Romneycare on a national level. I didn't agree with it then, I don't agree with it now. But apparently he (Romney) is still in the top five potential republican candidates for the 2012 presidential race, go figure!