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Their audacity is breathtaking! I read a thread yesterday that really astounded me. The Congressional Budget Office put the price tag of the House Democrats' health care plan at $1.5 trillion over 10 years. I assumed that price included the cost of administering the programs. But the CBO's fine print included a telltale caveat: "We have not yet estimated the administrative costs to the federal government of implementing the specified policies, nor have we accounted for all of the proposal's likely effects on spending for other federal programs."

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2294621/posts

We would have to hire thousands of new government employees with bloated union wages, their own DIFFERENT health care plan, pensions, etc and all with the "till death do us part" caveat! Imagine the contracts for endless "studies" creating unproductive and redundant committees, czar appointment, stress-relief outings (Soc. Sec), etc. It turns out that it is all just another JOBS program cloaked in their veil of "compassion"!

>We would have to hire thousands of new government employees with bloated union wages,<

Government employee unions are prohibited by law from negotiating wages - wages are (for practical purposes) set by the Congress and the President. There are not “union wages” for government workers ...

Where unions get involved with wages is for federal contractors - unions lobby for “prevailing wage” clauses in procurement legislation to insure that government contractors must pay wages equivalent to “union wages”. This is to ensure no contractor can price a contract based on “market wages” rather than “union wages”, and cut the unions out of federal contracts due to their bloated wages.

Fed employees do have their own health plan (which is not free - employees pay a percentage of the cost, as does the government). The health plan offers a number of choices from among private insurers like CareFirst, Kaiser-Permanente, Aetna, etc. The government does not administer the plan, it merely negotiates a master contract specifying what services must be offered. The private companies can (and do) set their own co-payments, rules for coverage (i.e. the necessity of a referral to see a specialist), and make their own claims decisions - though those decisions can be appealed to a federal board for conformity to the master contract. It is a very good plan, no doubt, but there are much better (and, or course, much worse) private employer sponsored plans out there.