[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 22398]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        REMOVE THE CMS GAG ORDER

  (Mr. FLEMING asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Speaker, it was recently reported that the Centers 
for Medicare and Medicaid Services has issued a gag order on private 
insurance companies to prevent them from providing information to their 
beneficiaries regarding the administration's proposed cuts to Medicare 
Advantage and how the Democrat health reform could take away their 
current coverage.
  The CBO, by the way, agrees with this. That is a fact that coverage 
is being taken away.
  However, the one entity not being affected by this gag order is the 
AARP, which has been a prime advocate of the Democrats' government 
takeover of health care. Even as AARP advocates for cutting Medicare 
Advantage plans by more than $150 billion, an analysis of the 
organization's operation reveals that it stands to receive tens of 
millions of dollars at the expense of seniors' medical care. Under the 
Democrats' plan, seniors are going to have to fund kickbacks to AARP-
sponsored plans, and there isn't a single provision attempting to 
impose any new restrictions on AARP policies.
  Did CMS somehow forget to include AARP among the organizations whose 
First Amendment rights to inform seniors of harmful Medicare provisions 
were restricted, or did the administration only wish to silence its 
critics?

                          ____________________