RNC Women

Nancy Pelosi unveiled the House Democrats’ version of the health reform bill yesterday at a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.  The fact that the ceremony was closed to the public was fitting, since Pelosi’s bill was drafted behind closed doors without public comment – much less Republican input. 

The Pelosi Plan is 1,990 pages long, or about 600 pages longer than HillaryCare in 1994 or Harry Reid’s proposal in the Senate.  What fills those extra pages?  Even more hypocrisy. 

At her unveiling ceremony, Pelosi bragged that her bill would not add one dime to the deficit.  What she didn’t tell the American public is that she introduced on the same day a separate bill that adds $245 billion to the deficit to fix reimbursement rates for doctors under Medicare.  Had Pelosi left this provision in the bill instead of tucking it away in separate legislation, her plan would have added more than $150 billion in deficit spending over the next 10 years and increased the cost of her huge bill, which is already over $1 trillion.

Pelosi’s plan also includes hundreds of billions of dollars of tax hikes on small businesses and individuals to pay for her attempted takeover.  And while she will claim loudly that her bill won’t add to the federal deficit, she can’t say the same for the bottom lines of state governments across this country. 

Those state governments will find themselves deep in a hole dug by Speaker Pelosi, as her bill shifts billions of dollars in Medicaid costs from the federal government to the states.  With state governments already struggling with declining revenues due to the recession, adding billions in additional Medicaid costs will only cut state budgets deeper and make it more difficult for them to provide basic services to their citizens. 

The Pelosi Plan is the wrong way to fix the wrong problems.  Her bill makes no real effort to let small businesses pool together across state lines to negotiate lower health insurance rates. 

The Pelosi Plan is as deeply flawed as Hillary Clinton’s universal health care plan in 1994, and it fills 30 percent more pages.  While few Democrat members of Congress are likely to read all 1,990 of those pages before they vote on them, you can read the Pelosi Plan online at http://docs.house.gov/rules/health/111_ahcaa.pdf. 

Halloween or not, it will be the scariest thing you do this weekend.