Nancy Pelosi has unveiled her monstrous bill — well, not exactly unveiled it, because the unveiling wasn’t open to the public. But we do know it is now nearly 2,000 pages long. And we know she wants to vote on this before November 11. Some of the high- and low-lights:

The legislation imposes as much as $150 billion in Medicare cuts on the prescription-drug industry — almost double the $80 billion cuts in the Senate bill. It imposes a 2.5 percent tax on medical device manufacturers, a quietly influential force on Capitol Hill. And health insurers, who have already agreed to end many of the practices banned by the bill, would have to compete with a government-run insurance vehicle that would put pressure on them to lower premiums.

It achieves deficit neutrality by phantom Medicare cuts (which are unlikely to go through or, if they do, will be promptly undone). And then there are the taxes and mandates, which include:

In addition, businesses with a combined annual payroll exceeding $500,000 will be forced to pay penalties for its uninsured workers. As expected, the House bill generates most of its income by imposing a graduated surtax on married couples who make more than $1 million and individuals whose adjusted gross income exceeds $500,000. The initial income thresholds were $350,000 for couples and $280,000 for individuals.

What about cost containment? No, there are fee cuts for doctors and hospitals, but that’s just the amount the government will pay for health care (that is, the procedures and treatments it will approve). The cost of health care is not really addressed by any of this.

Will a single Republican vote for a government takeover of health care and 1,990 pages of mandates, taxes, and controls? I would be surprised. The question is how many Democrats are willing to stake their political futures on this sort of power grab. Perhaps next Tuesday’s elections will be a wake-up call of sorts … a teachable moment is what they call it, right?

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 3:15 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.