DAYS before passage of the signature bill of the Democratic Party, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco assured her supporters that the health care measure was a good bill.

"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy," Pelosi said.

Four months after the bill passed, we are finding out what is in it.

Paperwork. Lots and lots of paperwork.

Enough paperwork to keep another million unionized government employees on the payroll for double the salary and fringe benefits paid their counterparts in the private sector.

Everything is related to health, and the government will regulate everything related to health, even the purchase, it turns out, of gold coins.

This development upset coin collector Harry Miller, editor of Numismatic News.

"Our representatives slipped some wording into the health care bill that will require a 1099 form to be filed with the IRS for any purchases a business makes over $600," Krause wrote.

"This can be coins, bullion, paper money, office supplies, airline tickets - you name it. The amount of paperwork generated nationwide will be enormous. It is another invasion of the privacy of what you buy or sell in relation to your hobby/investment."

Filing out a form to purchase a gold coin has nothing to do with health insurance.

Just imagine if pirates had to do this. 

Captain Jack Sparrow would be telling the boys to let the ship pass because he is still filling the 1099s on the doubloons they hauled in from the last Spanish ship they seized.

Yo, ho, hum, and a bottle of rum would have been yo, ho, jerk, and a mountain of paperwork.

Then there is your weight. The government wants to know what it is. Beginning in 2014, the government will demand to know the body mass index of every American.

Again, my weight has nothing to do with expanding the percentage of Americans who have health insurance from 85 percent to a whopping 94 percent.

Then there are the unintended consequences, the Orange County Register said in an editorial.

"For example, the White Castle hamburger chain said last week that it would lose 55 percent of its annual net income because of a single provision to levy fines of $3,000 per employee when the company pays insurance premiums amounting to more than 9.5 percent of their income," the editorial said.

So what do you do? You lay off workers to save $3,000 an employee or you get rid of health insurance altogether and pay a fine of 8 percent of their pay and save about 1.5 percent on the payroll.

Republican Congressman Dan Lundgren is among those appalled by the hidden provisions of this new law.

"We are finding out more and more how destructive this is of our economy," Lundgren said.

What about requiring a 1099 form for any business purchase worth $600 or more, including gold coins?

"Virtually no one knew it was in there," Lundgren said.

This was trust-me legislation written by most untrustworthy people.

Two decades before the Declaration of Independence, Ben Franklin wrote to a friend: "He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither."

People usually apply this admonition exclusively to all things military, but Franklin's warning applies to all things governmental.

For Social Security, we gave up the liberty of keeping our pay to ourselves, as the government now keeps track of our wages.

Now for health insurance security, we trade the liberty of keeping our weight to ourselves.

In November 2008, 53 percent of Americans voted for change. Now the government will track their coins.

Surber may be reached at donsur...@dailymail.com. His blog is at http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber.