The Pelosi-Reid train wreck

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled a 2,000-page health-care bill Thursday — complete with a “public option” — cobbled together from competing versions passed by separate committees.

At this point, she and her Senate counterparts are crafting their bills in ways to secure votes for passage rather than to produce good policy. But their attempts may backfire on both fronts.

Fiscally conservative Dems in the Blue Dog coalition, for example, quickly demanded more proof that the bill — which spends $1.055 trillion over 10 years — will lower health-care costs in the long run.

And that comes after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid‘s ObamaCare bill met major resistance from Independent Democrat Joe Lieberman, who said he’d back a GOP filibuster.

Government-run health insurance — even with an opt-out provision, as Reid proposes — “creates a whole new government entitlement program for which taxpayers will be on the line,” said the Connecticut senator.

And that, he added, “is just asking for trouble — for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt.”

How right he is.

Combined with growing skepticism from other Senate Democrats, that could leave Reid short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.

Reid & Co. also lost the support of Maine Republican Olympia Snowe, who says she’s “deeply disappointed” that the majority leader included a public option, notwithstanding its opt-out for states.

Why? For one thing, no one can say how that opt-out would work. For another, it fails to address a key problem with a government plan: With Washington writing the rules and providing funding, a public plan would enjoy an unfair edge over private ones.

Meanwhile, Democrats have already significantly weakened various cost-containment provisions proposed by Republicans in both the House and Senate bills.

And OMB Director Peter Orszag admitted this week: “It is . . . difficult to quantify precisely how these steps will work together to promote quality and reduce cost growth.”

That’s because Dems keep promising the moon, claiming they can provide universal coverage, better care and steeply declining prices — all without blowing new holes in the federal budget.

And anytime a skeptic crunches their numbers, they just move the goal line, saying it’s a “work in progress.”

But as House Minority Leader John Boehner said Thursday, some things about the bill are already clear: “It will raise the cost of Americans’ health-insurance premiums; it will kill jobs with tax hikes and new mandates, and it will cut seniors’ Medicare benefits.”

Seems the old adage still makes sense: If it sounds too good to be true, it is.
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