At Overlawyered.com, Walter Olson beats us to a round-up of reaction to Secretary Sebelius’ attempt to squelch criticism of the new health law for raising health care costs. From “Sebelius and health insurers: shut up, she explained”:

Eugene Volokh, Michael Cannon and Ed Morrissey react to the Secretary’s announcement that her Department of Health and Human Services will show “zero tolerance” for regulated health insurers who inflict “misinformation” on the public in the course of blaming ObamaCare for rate increases. More: Monday WSJ editorial (”Zero tolerance for expressing an opinion, or offering an explanation to policyholders? They’re more subtle than this in Caracas.”)

Michael Cannon’s post at Cato’s blog, Cato@Liberty, is especially good.

UPDATE (8:53 a.m.): More from Michael Barone at The Washington Examiner, “Gangster government stifles criticism of Obamacare”: “The threat to use government regulation to destroy or harm someone’s business because they disagree with government officials is thuggery. Like the Obama administration’s transfer of money from Chrysler bondholders to its political allies in the United Auto Workers, it is a form of gangster government.” Barone is becoming increasingly sharp in his criticisms of the Administration.

Hewitt Associates’ news release, “Nine out of 10 U.S. Companies Anticipate Losing Grandfather Status Under Health Care Reform, According to New Hewitt Survey“:

LINCOLNSHIRE, Ill., Aug 10, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — While many U.S. companies initially hoped they could preserve much of their existing group health plans under the new grandfather provision, a new survey by Hewitt Associates, a global human resources consulting and outsourcing company, shows that almost all now believe they will not. Ninety percent of companies said they anticipate losing grandfathered status by 2014, with the majority expecting to do so in the next two years.

Under the “grandfather” provision of the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, companies can maintain many of their current health care coverage provisions and are required to make fewer changes to plan documents and administrative procedures in order to comply with the new law. Companies can lose their grandfather status if they take certain steps such as reducing benefits, significantly raising co-payment charges, significantly raising deductibles or changing insurance carriers.

According to Hewitt’s survey of 466 companies–representing 6.9 million employees–most companies expect to lose grandfather status because of health plan design changes (72 percent) and/or changes to company subsidy levels (39 percent).

These survey results reinforce the observations made by Joe Trauger, the National Association of Manufacturers’ vice president for human resources policy, in a Shopfloor.org blog post on Monday, “Like Your Health Care Plan? You Can’t Keep It.” Short version: If your plan changes, wave it goodbye.

The NAM submitted its comments Monday (available here) in response to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Interim Final Rules for Group Health Plans and Health Insurance Coverage Relating to Status as a Grandfathered Health Plan under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The HHS regulatory docket is HHS-OS-2010-0015.

Coinciding with the new TV spot from Employers for a Healthy Economy (see post below), Investor’s Business Daily editorializes on the billions of dollars of new taxes in the pending health care legislation. From “Hidden Taxes Hurt Just as Much“:

The federal takeover of the nation’s health care system that Democrats are brewing up in Washington will have to be financed by someone. The administration wants to put it on the backs of the middle class in the form of a 40% excise tax on the value of health insurance coverage that exceeds $8,500 a year for individuals or $23,000 for families.

This isn’t just another soak-the-rich scheme. This is going to hit the middle class — the schoolteachers, the steelworkers, the everyday folks of whom Bruce Springsteen sings so passionately.

That’s why House Democrats and labor unions oppose it.

As does the National Association of Manufacturers.

The editorial coincides with the Obama Administration’s reaffirmation of its support for the excise tax. The New York Times reported last evening, “House Democrats Push Back on Cadillac Tax“:

Representative Carol Shea-Porter, Democrat of New Hampshire, who spoke out forcefully against the proposed exicse tax, said afterward that it could hurt middle class families.

“I was standing up for my constituents,” she said in a statement. “I have serious concerns about the excise tax proposal and the effect that it could have on middle class families in New Hampshire and across the country.”

Health care bills in both the House and Senate require individuals to purchase health-care coverage if they are not covered through some other program, a “compulsory contract.” In a new Legal Memorandum from the Heritage Foundation, Randy Barnett, Nathaniel Stewart and Todd F. Gaziano explain “Why the Personal Mandate to Buy Health Insurance Is Unprecedented and Unconstitutional”:

The purpose of this compulsory contract, coupled with the arbitrary price ratios and controls, is to require many people to buy artificially high-priced policies to subsidize coverage for others as well as an industry saddled with other government costs and regulations. Congress lawfully could enact a general tax to pay for these subsidies or it could create a tax credit for those who buy health insurance, but that would require Congress to “pay for” or budget for the subsidies in a conventional manner. The sponsors of the current bills are attempting, through the personal mandate, to keep the transfers entirely off budget or–through the gimmick of unconstitutional taxes or penalties they dub “shared responsibility payments”–make these transfers appear to be revenue-enhancing.

This “personal responsibility” provision of the legislation, more accurately known as the “individual mandate” because it commands all individuals to enter into a contractual relationship with a private insurance company, takes congressional power and control to a striking new level. Its defenders have struggled to justify the mandate by analogizing it to existing federal laws and court decisions, but their efforts do not withstand serious scrutiny. An individual mandate to enter into a contract with or buy a particular product from a private party, with tax penalties to enforce it, is unprecedented– not just in scope but in kind–and unconstitutional as a matter of first principles and under any reasonable reading of judicial precedents.

Defenders argue for the mandate by saying, “Well, you have to buy auto insurance to drive,” a false comparison demolished by the authors. The Heritage paper also addresses Commerce Clause and Taxing Clause issues and concludes that the Supreme Court would be unlikely to uphold legislation that included the mandate.

News coverage of the admittedly mind-bogglingly complex, thousand-plus page health care bills has mostly kept away from the personal mandate issue, save for some discussion of the Massachusetts precedent. These important questions of Constitutionality and liberty deserve more attention.

UPDATE (9:35 a.m.): Via The Volokh Conspiracy, a Heritage video of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Barnett and Eugene Volokh on the unconstitutionality of the health care mandate. (Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds.)

Power Breakfast, a morning news segment on WAMU public radio here in Washington, reports that eight Senate Democratic women will give speeches today on the health care bill’s impact on women.

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) declares: “There’s a lot of issues in health care reform that impact women. Pre-existing conditions — Almost every woman has a pre-existing condition.”

Last week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used inflammatory language to attack the role of insurance companies in the health care debate, comments gained wide attention. From The Hill:

“They are the villains in this,” Pelosi said of private insurers. “They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening. And the public has to know that. They can disguise their arguments any way they want, but the fact is that they don’t want the competition.”

The comments have been well circulated, analyzed and deplored. Nothing to add on this end, other than to express the worry that if insurance companies — which perform an essential function in the U.S. economy — can be villified so readily, then maybe so can manufacturers.

We also note a cultural shift. It wasn’t so long ago that insurance companies were seen in, if not an heroic light, then at least a sympathetic one. One of the greatest of old time radio programs broadcast in the ’50s and early  ’60s was “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar,” about the “fabulous” free-lance insurance investigator with the “action-packed expense account.” In its finest, mid-50s incarnation, the actor Bob Bailey protrayed Dollar as a sympathetic, smart, tough and yet rueful detective. He worked on commission, saving insurance companies thousands of dollars from fraudulent claims.

Back then, the villains were the criminals, scoundrels and frauds who cheated the insurance companies. So what happened?

P.S. Ed Walker broadcasts an episode of “Your Truly, Johnny Dollar” every Sunday on public radio here in D.C. You can also download the public domain episodes at Archive.org. The multipart episodes are the best.