Expanding Government: 111 New Bureaucracies in Healthcare Bill
(February 12, 2009 - Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images North America)
For those of you who read the 1900 page healthcare bill presented by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, you already know that the bill creates a large number of government-run boards, commissions, programs, and bureaucracies. Since I know that none of you actually read it, trust me its in there. While I mean it, House Republicans are hoping that Americans will believe them like I hope you believe me and are shouting in the hallways of Capitol Hill this week spreading the word about the growth of government and addition of oversight that this bill will bring with it.
This must have been seen as an inevitability to even those who support the healthcare plan. The federal government simply cannot run even the most elementary of tasks without fifteen steps between points A & B. The Founding Fathers never intended for our federal government to have to move swiftly which is in part why it takes 1900 page legislation to alter the face of 1/6 of our nation’s economy. In fairness, if that much money is going to be run by the federal government, maybe there should be 111 different entities looking over it. That being said, 111 bureaucracies certainly make it hard to characterize this thing as anything short of a government takeover of healthcare.
If you haven’t taken a look at the bill from the House, read a few pages. No Exaggeration, you will see one of these in the first 30 seconds. You may not recognize it as a “bureaucracy” because they don’t spell that out in big bold letters – B-U-R-E-A-U-C-R-A-C-Y. But if you read the language, every other paragraph or subsection makes reference to an entity to be created under the bill. It is in part why the bill is such a headache to read.
Among some off the new agencies, the list cites a Health Insurance Exchange; the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation; the Public Health Investment Fund; the Public Health Workforce Corps; an Assistant Secretary for Health Information; the Food and Drug Administration Office of Women’s Health; grant programs for alternative medical liability laws, infant mortality programs and other issues; and about 100 other government-sponsored creations.
“That ought to tell you all that we need to know, that we’re going to have 1,990 pages of legislation,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said in an interview Sunday. “The word ’shall’ exists in this bill 3,345 times.”
The list underscores the GOP complaint that the health care reform bill over-burdens taxpayers and the government itself. Republicans said Monday they plan to read aloud the massive bill — in the space of four hours — on the House floor Tuesday.
A Democratic source dismissed the list of “bureaucracies” as an exaggeration, calling them “demonstration projects” instead.
“The programs and demonstration projects they list aren’t new agencies but rather new projects,” the source told Fox News. “And they’re sensible ways to test new policies before more broadly implementing them. … Many of the programs and demonstration projects are things that Republicans themselves have called for and supported.”
Republicans, for instance, have called for medical malpractice reform, which is referenced in the list of new government agencies. The Democratic source said offices like “ombudsman” and “inspector general” are just individual offices in “existing agencies” and not new bureaucracies.
House Democrats unveiled their unified bill last week, which was estimated to cost $1.055 trillion over 10 years. House lawmakers are expected to begin debate this week, but Republicans — vastly outnumbered in the House — continue to push back hard.
