Now that both the Senate and House have passed two different health care reform bills in support of Obamacare, the two houses of congress must come together to craft one bill.  This is proving to be more difficult than the Democrats had thought with various special interest groups opposing different components of the two bills.

One sticking point is the so-called Cadillac insurance tax provision in the Senate health care reform bill.  The bill seeks to partially fund Obamacare by placing a 40% tax on health insurance plans that cost over $8,000 for an individual and $21,000 or $23,000 for a family (depending upon where you get your information).  This tax will hit many middle class families, which doesn’t seem to bother the Democrats as much as you would think. 

However, this Cadillac insurance tax will also hit many union members.  The major Unions are against this provision being in the final health care reform bill which is making several Democrats in the house nervous as Unions pour hundreds of millions of dollars to the Democratic party every year.

Previous version of the Senate health care reform bill had exclusions for some or all Unions leaving non-union middle class workers and others with generous health insurance plans holding the bag.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air pointed out that there is another problem with the Cadillac insurance tax.  It seems that the Senate is counting on making hundreds of billions of dollars on the tax and not counting on the fact that many people will opt for cheaper plans as the excise tax will drive up the cost of insurance for many Americans.  This would further add to the deficit which is against one of Obama’s major goals for the legislation.

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next month as the Democrats race to get a health care reform bill to Obama’s desk prior to the State of the Union Address in February.

Pelosi indicated that the bill would cost just under $894 billion, which is close to the cost of the Senate’s version of the bill.

However, the CBO estimated that the bill would cost just over $1 trillion, that is 1,000,000,000,000 to you and me.  Several Democrat officials indicated that the total cost of the bill would be just over $1.2 trillion or $300 billion more than Pelosi’s estimates.

In the Senate, the bill was kept under $900 billion by employing several accounting trickssuch as delaying costs for the first few years and moving almost $300 billion in spending to a separate bill (the total of the two would be $1.2 trillion, but you aren’t supposed to notice that).  It is unclear at this time if the Pelosi bill includes that $300 billion or not.  Having it included would push the cost of the bill to over $1.5 trillion.

According to house Republicans, Pelosi’s bill would also create over 100 new federal bureaucracies.  Among the new departments set up would be the 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, and infant mortality programs.

Not surprisingly, the media isn’t calling out Pelosi on her attempt to pull one over the American people by misstating the cost of her bill by over $300 billion.  Hopefully, moderate Democrats will refuse to support this costly behemoth of a health care reform bill.