The Health and Human Services Department “was given a billion dollars implementation money,” Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg of Montana said. “That money is gone already on additional bureaucrats and IT programs, computerization for the implementation.”

“Oh boy,” Stan Dorn of the Urban Institute said. “HHS has a huge amount of work to do and the states do, too. There will be new health insurance marketplaces in every state in the country, places you can go online, compare health plans.” …

“It’s a delegation of extensive authority from Congress to the Department of Health and Human Services and a lot of boards and commissions and bureaus throughout the bureaucracy,” Matt Spalding of the Heritage Foundation said. “We counted about 180 or so.” …

“They are asking for several hundred new employees,” Dorn said. “You have rules you need to write and you need lawyers, so there are lots of things you need to do when you are standing up a new enterprise.” …

180 new bureaus/boards/commissions, hundreds of new employees, billions of dollars, who knows how many new rules to comply with… the mind reels. Make no mistake about it, whatever Team Obama says — this is a massive, unprecedented expansion of federal power. Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass it to know what’s in it, and we’re still not even done figuring out what’s in it. Awesome.

And it’s not as if all of these rules and regulations are just innocent little administrative instructions, either; the Catholic Church, for instance, isn’t too pleased with the rule decreeing that insurance plans need to cover contraception, regardless of religious affiliations. What other nefarious liberty-infringing, social-engineering surprises are going to come out of this legislative Pandora’s box?