Nobody has to read the 2,310 pages of the health care bill to know why it will ruin health care in America. You don’t have to go any further than page 49, which marks the end of Subtitle E, “Governance,” to understand what’s coming. Subtitle E creates the office of the “Health Choices Commissioner,” the person charged with putting into effect all of the wonderful regulatory mechanisms that H.R. 4872 demands. But, in the regulatory sense, the Commissioner is not a person. The Commissioner is rather an institution, one that will have powers and responsibilities unprecedented in American history.

Even if Obamacare immediately did all of the things that the president claims it will (which I don’t for a minute believe); even if lowered the deficit, reduced the cost of health care, improved the quality of that care and increased access to it, does anyone who has ever dealt with any of today’s bloated, creeping, undead regulatory agencies of government actually believe that such a happy situation would last? If there is one thing that those of us who deal with government bureaucracy know, it is this: government bureaucracy never gets better, never increases in efficiency and never costs less. Never.

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In my business, the environmental industry, the EPA has a position analogous to Health Choices Commissioner: EPA Administrator. Practically everything that the EPA does, on the federal and state levels, flows down from the power granted to the EPA Administrator. A president can appoint a marvelous Administrator, or a terrible one (Obama’s choice, Lisa Jackson, falls into the latter category) but it really doesn’t matter. The choice of the figurehead sitting on top of the pyramid is merely the difference between the thousands of thousands of bureaucrats on the bottom – the people who actually interact with the regulated community – creating a pile of obstacles the size of Mt. Everest to obstruct industry, or a pile the size of Mt. McKinley. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, because you can’t get over, around, under or through the obstructions.

Every time a low level bureaucrat fines some Ma and Pa business tens of thousands of dollars because the owners failed to file Form A921-C on time, no matter that the business didn’t actually pollute, the bureaucrat acts with the authority of the Administrator. Every time a state agency refuses to issue a permit that would allow a business to expand, because the permit engineer isn’t smart enough to understand the business’ expansion plan, the agency acts with the authority of the Administrator. Every time some fuzzy-cheeked, fresh-out-of-college EPA employee tosses some new requirements at a manufacturer that adds unseen costs onto the price of the product that is produced, he is able to do so because he wields the authority of the Administrator.

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This is what Obamacare means to me: it’s the most massive regulatory structure ever created, and it will inevitably mean that the creeping, grasping hand of government will interfere with your lives in ways that no one, least of all the president and Congress, can even imagine. If you’ve dealt with the EPA, OSHA, IRS or any of the other myriad alphabet agencies that were created to “improve” America, you recognize that this is so. Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and all the rest don’t get it, because they’ve never had to deal with what we have to deal with.

If some progressive were to read this, there is no doubt that he or she would dismiss my attack on regulatory agencies as sour grapes. I’ve heard it before. “Trzupek represents industry – of course he’s anti-EPA. It’s in his self interest to have that attitude.” Not so. My job, which Obama would probably define as a “green job” by the by, exists solely because industry needs people who can defend industrial concerns when the bloated bureaucracy comes a-calling, palms-out. Absent that bureaucracy, absent an enormously complicated regulatory structure, nobody would need my particular expertise. But, my expertise doesn’t do anything to make America better, stronger or more prosperous. It only serves to help blunt some portion of bureaucratic excess that should never have existed in the first place. The best thing that could happen, in terms of the future of the nation I love, would be for my job to become completely unnecessary.

It follows that this new, massive bureaucratic structure that Obamacare hopes to create will undoubtedly result in exactly the same kind of unproductive waste. Insurance providers and the medical community will hire experts to push back against bureaucratic excess, and the bureaucracy will fight them tooth and nail in return. Consumers will fund both sides of the argument. Eventually, someone in Congress will notice that the expensive problems and Washington will attempt to “reform” the process, but – given the limitations of government – those reforms will only further complicate the process, thus making health care even less effective, less responsive and more expensive than it was before. That is the inevitable, proven course of government interference with the free market.

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Bureaucracy is never the answer. Reagan understood that. The American people know that. The president and his allies in Congress haven’t a clue. Yet, here we are: in the midst of the greatest attempted power-grab in the history of this Republic. One sixth of our economy is at stake and those who hope to control it expect us to believe that, if they are successful, we will be better off. Nobody in America enjoys dealing with insurance companies. We get that. But the bureaucratic nightmare that Barack Obama wants to force down America throat is a completely unpalatable alternative