Washington, DC – Four months after U.S. House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously declared “We have to pass the bill
so you can find out what’s in it,” a congressional panel has
released the first chart illustrating the 2,801 page health care
law President Obama signed into law in March. (Click here to view the pdf.)
Developed by the Joint Economic Committee minority, led by U.S
Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas,
the detailed organization chart displays a bewildering array of
new government agencies, regulations and mandates.
“For Americans, as well as Congressional Democrats who didn’t
bother to read the bill, this first look at the final health
care law confirms what many fear, that reform morphed into a
monstrosity of new bureaucracies, mandates, taxes and rationing
that will drive up health care costs, hurt seniors and force our
most intimate health care choices into the hands of Washington
bureaucrats,” said Brady, the committee’s senior House
Republican. “If this is what passes for health care reform in
America, then God help us all.”
Brownback, the committee’s ranking member, added, “This updated
chart illustrates the overwhelming expansion of government
control over health choices and the bewildering complexity
facing everyone affected by this law. It doesn’t take long to
see how the recently signed health care bill causes a hugely
expensive and explosive expansion of federal control over health
care. Personal choices that should be between a doctor and a
patient will quickly be strangled in a never ending web of
bureaucracy.”
Senate Steering Committee Chairman Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina)
called Obamacare “a bureaucratic nightmare. The Democrats’
takeover of health care creates a byzantine network of 159 new
federal programs and bureaucracies to make decisions that should
be between just the patient and their doctor. It should concern
everyone that at the center of this regulatory web is the new
CMS chief, Donald Berwick, who has championed rationing and
European socialized medicine. Americans were rightly outraged
that this big government bill was rushed through Congress before
anyone read or fully understood the bill’s consequences.
Republicans will fight to repeal this reckless takeover and to
ensure health care freedom to American families.”
In addition to capturing the massive expansion of government and
the overwhelming complexity of new regulations and taxes, the
chart portrays - $569 billion in higher taxes, - $529 billion
in cuts to Medicare; - swelling of the ranks of Medicaid by 16 million; - 17 major insurance mandates; and - the creation of
two new bureaucracies with powers to impose future rationing:
the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and the
Independent Payments Advisory Board. Brady admits committee
analysts could not fit the entire health care bill on one chart.
“This portrays only about one-third of the complexity of the
final bill. It’s actually worse than this.”
