Just in time for Halloween, House Democratic leaders have released a truly scary new version of their health care proposal - all 1,990 pages of it.

Yes, you read that right.

And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the actual price tag comes in at $1.055 trillion over 10 years, although the “net cost” CBO insists will be about $894 billion. (If you believe that, you might want to think about buying the Zakim Bridge at a bargain price too.)

PelosiCare does, of course, include a public option health insurance plan - but one which CBO estimates will be more expensive for people to purchase than private insurance. Somehow that really doesn’t surprise us. Has the federal bureaucracy - and we are talking a huge one here - ever done anything in a cost-effective manner?

To provide coverage for up to 96 percent of the U.S. population - expanding Medicaid and subsidizing some coverage for those who would be mandated to buy their own - the bill would raise taxes on those earning over $500,000 a year (by an additional 5.4 percent) and penalize companies not offering health care with “fines” of anywhere from 2 percent to 8 percent of payroll.

Perhaps its most serious impact would be on the drug industry which estimates its cost at about $140 billion (some of that in rebates that would have to be paid to the government for Medicaid and Medicare patients) and some $20 billion in new taxes for medical device makers (down from the $40 billion included in the Senate Finance Committee version of the bill).

Hospitals are worried - as well they should be - that a good deal of the Medicare “savings” promised as a way of funding the bill will come right out of their hides. They are right. (And by the way, a bill to reverse a scheduled 21 percent reduction in Medicare payments for physicians is now in a separate piece of legislation.)

The House takes up the bill next week with Republicans opposed, fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats still silent, hospitals apoplectic, insurers charging a breach of trust and employers quaking in their boots.

And in our own Hub of Health Care we have every reason to be fearful that PelosiCare will have a devasting effect on an industry we have come to depend on for our physical and our economic health.