Light summer reading: that health care bill
| Saturday, Aug 15 2009 08:07 PM
Last Updated Saturday, Aug 15 2009 08:10 PM
I undertook the health care reform challenge last week. Yes -- hold your applause -- I read the entire bill. OK, I skimmed it, but I did flip through all 1,026 pages. I read every section heading and diligently waded into the sober, dispassionate text when I came to the parts that seemed especially important or potentially controversial. My internal yellow-highlighter was hard at work.
And I'm here to tell you the verbiage is every bit as convoluted as advertised. You thought James Joyce's "Ulysses" was tough? You thought the fine-print legalese on the back of a credit card statement made you dizzy? Suddenly I can empathize with Congressfolk and their designated staff wonks who must digest the whole thing -- and, believe me, feeling sorry for members of Congress is not in my nature. (Few legislators have actually read the thing, or so we've been told, no doubt because of its stupefying denseness, but then most rely on staff to study legislation.)
Read it yourself. If you are among the folks who worry that the government is trying to foist something on us that we don't want or can't pay for (and some of those criticisms have merit), reading the bill may or may not ease your mind. If you are among those who suspect it's all being kept secret, accessible only to the soulless politicians who know the password and the secret handshake, simply feasting your eyes on this dull prose should have a calming effect.
Google "health care bill." There, first among the (literally) 101 million hits, is the pdf file of one particular version (the "as-introduced," 1,018-page version, one of three versions kicking around in the House; there's also a Senate version). This legislation isn't difficult to find.
But, yes, it is challenging to comprehend. One reader of this newspaper, defending his criticism of a provision that he claims would give the government "direct access to our personal financial accounts for the purpose of withdrawing money" to help pay for others' care, put it this way:
"... This health care bill is so long and so complicated that I fear that it has been written intentionally that way so as to hide items that would incur the disagreement of the voting public were they to be identified. I can only react to that which I can understand ..."
No, it's not Hemingway. Unless you write legal briefs for a living, you might be put off by all the "supercedes" and "insofars." Murk it up enough, and something as simple as defining electronic transactions can be misread as giving the feds permission to withdraw as much as they want without permission. Of course, that section merely describes automated withdrawals of the type one might use for car payments.
Rushing in to fill the comprehension void are opponents of reform. They've seized upon the unquotable character of the bill's language and inserted their own easy-to-understand interpretations. Hence, the "death panels" that will come rolling up in grandpa's driveway the day health care reform becomes law. "Such a system is downright evil," former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin declared on her Facebook page last week. Such a system would indeed be evil. Fortunately no one in Washington has proposed anything even remotely like the scenario she so irresponsibly paints.
It's useful to remember that no legislation is especially pleasurable to read. The Medicare bill of 2003 (which added a drug benefit to the program and little else) was also about 1,000 pages long. If Congress needed the page-count equivalent of "War and Peace" to describe a drug benefit, how can a much more significant overhaul be explained in roughly the same amount of space?
Answer: It can't. If the authors of this legislation ever got really specific -- the current bills are full of general references to what would be covered, such as maternity, emergency rooms, drugs, etc. -- the final bill would look like the complete works of J.K. Rowling. Clearly, the really important details are yet to come, assuming anything comes of this whole thing. So, many of the answers people are demanding simply aren't there.
What's a concerned citizen to do in the meantime? Find a reputable source of analysis. Two of the best: the Kaiser Family Foundation (kff.org) and factcheck.org. Or check out the bill summary here: tinyurl.com/summary816.
Then go find some light reading. Something with pictures, maybe.
E-mail Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com or twitter.com/stubblebuzz.
