House health care bill is out…

…and man is it a behemoth. Weighing in at 1,990 pages, I’m beginning to wonder if they edited it slightly to keep it from tipping the scales at 2,000-plus. They even blew by my guess on a Facebook site of 1,813 pages.

In case you’re wondering, a quick search of the document reveals the word “shall” comes up 3,424 times while the word “tort” comes up just twice, in reference to a previous Federal act. The word “tax” comes up 97 times and “fee” comes up 59 times but the phrase “fee for service” is absent.

I’m kind of curious, though. If a bill to affect 1/6 of our economy comes in at just under 2,000 pages, why is the tax code so much more than 12,000 pages? I know, it’s an aside because I suppose in theory if you take every law passed by any one recent Congress you’d run into multiple thousands of pages as well. That seems way too complex for a government which was supposed to be limited according to the intent of those who created it. No wonder Congressmen supposedly have to have such large staffs.

Better start reading this bill, Frank!

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.