The New Social Contract
My strongest objection is that the bill creates a new contract between the federal government and the people. There is only one proper way to do that: pass a new constitutional amendment. Winning one election is insufficient. An amendment wouldn't be possible because the bill is unpopular. The Dems are betting that the bill will become popular after it is passed, or at least that it will be impossible to undo once it has passed by creating special interests in favor of its perpetuation.Once the bill is passed there will be no end of calls for regulating personal behavior in the name of efficiency and cost saving, see Jacob Sullum's 1998 book For Your Own Good: The Tyranny of Public Health. The government will take your money and then regulate your personal life in the name of saving you money. You can't opt out - there will be no exemptions for people who pay more in than they take out (i.e. you and me). The inescapable nature of the system is what makes it a new Social Contract.
We Have No Idea What Is In It
The bill is 2000 pages long. It sets up advisory commissions, discovery panels, and includes a whole host of new regulations. It only takes a single vaguely worded paragraph to make anything possible. Nancy Pelosi said "But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy" and she wasn't kidding.This will also be the begging, not the end of legislation. Pelosi has also promised the bill is the beginning of the slippery slope. Saying yes to this bill is saying yes to things that aren't even in it.
Unconstitutional
The Washington Post has a good op-ed questioning the constitutionality of the bill. In short for the bill to be constitutional congress has to have a plenary power that they simply don't have. This isn't a grey area, the framers specifically argued in the Federialst Papers 41 that the constitution didn't read like a note to your babysitter stating:- Alice can only eat dessert if she eats her veggies.
- Alice has to be in bed by 8pm.
- Alice can do whatever the hell she wants.
Financial Disaster
Proponents of the bill like to point out that it is "deficit neutral" - meaning it takes in as much money in taxes and fees that it will spend. Those numbers from Congressional Budget Office are a fiction. 250 billion of the Trillion dollar price tag are paid for by a scheduled cut to Medicare that will be postponed immediately after the bill is passed. To balance out the budget there is almost no spending in the first four years, just tax collection. All the money is spent in the last six years.That spending situation is very similar to Social Security, so we know exactly what will happen. Social Security ran at a profit for decades, but the money wasn't squirreled away - it went into the general fund and was spent. Now Social Security is paying out more than it takes in. Likewise the taxes for healthcare will be spent in the first four years, and not saved up to be spent in the last six. So all that spending on the backend will be unfunded even as baseline spending (non-healthcare spending) is increased in the first four years.