The Death Care Bill

[~~whimsy~~]

About the best that can be said about the Senate health-care bill that Harry Reid revealed this week is that it's marginally less destructive than the House *******. By a hair. Its $1.2 trillion cost (more like $2.5 trillion if you discount the accounting gimmicks), multiple and damaging new taxes, and new regulations will make health insurance more expensive for most Americans while reducing the quality of medical care.

We'll dissect the damage in the days to come. But for today let's focus on the damage the bill would do to consumer-driven health plans—the kind that give individuals more control over their health dollars and insurance choices. The 2,074-page bill crushes them with malice-aforethought.

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And~~~

Just in time for Thanksgiv ing, Sen. Harry Reid has given us a giant turkey of a health-care bill. At 2,074 pages and more than 370,000 words, it's officially "scored" as costing $849 billion over 10 years -- $400 million per page, or $2.3 million per word.

But that doesn't come close to measuring its true cost. The bill uses various accounting gimmicks to hide its true cost. For example the bill doesn't include more than $200 billion needed to prevent a 21 percent cut in Medicare next year. [The CBO "score" actually assumes Reid cuts Medicare 23 percent -- Ed.] That cost has been spun off into a separate bill, even though the Senate voted down that approach last month.

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