WASHINGTON — At long last, we have the Great Compromise.
Nancy Pelosi and Democrats, hellbent on controlling your health care, say they have finally found the magic bill that will fix the system, save us all money, and solve all these political problems we have seen with Americans taking to the streets refusing to trust the federal government to run a massive new program.
Democrats say the bill will cost about $900 billion and will be paid for at the end of the first 10 years.
That’s because the government will begin collecting all the new taxes, levies and fees right away, but the most expensive parts of the bill — subsidies for buying health insurance and the expansion of Medicaid — don’t kick in until 2013.
That’s like getting cash back on a new car, telling everybody it was free and pretending you won’t have to make payments once they come due.
At nearly 2,000 pages, this latest bill uses the word “shall” 3,425 times. In other words, it’s just another massive bill where the feds tell people what to do on every page.
Pelosi says much of her dreamy legislation will be paid for with $500 billion in savings.
Besides being some seriously faithful speculation, it tells you something about the feds’ efforts thus far to bring sanity to the health-care industry.
That’s because two bloated and corrupted government-funded “public options” already dominate the medical industry — Medicare and Medicaid.
Today, Medicare sits on the ledge of bankruptcy, while Medicaid is pushing California and many other states to the brink of insolvency.
What does that tell you about the federal government’s track record here?