Witness the prescient wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson who wrote, “Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.” Now consider the story of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services v. Forest Laboratories.
When the Wall Street Journal pointed out the utter outrageousness of HHS’ threat to bar Forest Labs CEO Harold Solomon from doing business with the government, the department sent an in-your-face letter to the editor restating, for all intents and purposes, that “look out, there’s a new sheriff in town.”
But the Journal was right and HHS 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 [HHS Secretary Kathleen] Sebelius wants, or if they spread what she deems to be ‘misinformation’ about the president’s health bill.”
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 Solomon, the office of the HHS Inspector General 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.
The HHS IG also 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 HHS headquarters at the Hubert H. Humphrey Building to cow health care companies into obsequious servitude — they should, equally and publicly and aggressively, be called to task.
This is more than about “what Forest did,” it’s also an important precedent relative to out-of-control government litigation. Let’s face it, these days regulators aren’t above bringing flimsy cases — because they know corporations, acting on legal advice to mitigate risk, often choose to settle to avoid huge legal bills and additional public relations exposure.
If the Obama administration intends to view every such settlement as an admission of guilt and then dictate who can run the company, well, Katy debar the door.
Peter J. Pitts is president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and a former associate commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
