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The “Health Care” Bill — Who Writes this Crap?
By T Blogger | August 6, 2009
The “Health Care” bill that is in the U.S. House of Representatives is, at present, 1,018 (8 1/2 x 11) pages. I have attempted to read it. While I will readily admit that I am not a lawyer, I am a reasonably intelligent person whose formal education consists of a BA in English, and an MA in linguistics. This bill is the most confusing collection of legal gobbledygook I have ever had the misfortune to try to decipher.
Probably the most disturbing aspect of this monstrosity is that a high percentage of the text consists of changes to other legislation (primarily the Social Security Act). What this means is that, if one wants to understand what the “Health Care” House bill actually mandates, one must have a copy of the Social Security Act, and all the other laws referred to in order know what is being changed in the existing U.S. Code. This is because all the references are like the following (copied and pasted verbatim from the official Government PDF document):
(a) GROUP HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE.—Title
XXVII of the Public Health Service Act is amended by
inserting after section 2713 the following new section:
or:
(1) IN GENERAL.—Part C of title XI of the So-
cial Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1320d et seq.) is
amended by inserting after section 1173 the fol-
lowing new section:
or:
(42 U.S.C. 1320d) is amended—
(A) in paragraph (7), by striking ‘‘with
reference to’’ and all that follows and inserting
‘‘with reference to a transaction or data ele-
ment of health information in section 1173
means implementation specifications, certifi-
cation criteria, operating rules, messaging for-
mats, codes, and code sets adopted or estab-
lished by the Secretary for the electronic ex-
change and use of information’’;
Got that?
Thanks to the magic of my PDF reader, I can say with certainty that there are 394 “insertions” into existing laws in this document.
As my Dad used to, I was born at night — but not LAST night. This “legislation” is a monument to obfuscation. The reason almost none of the congressmen / congresswomen have read this bill is that it is almost unreadable! It is unconscionable that the U.S. congress is willing to vote on making binding law of a document that they can’t understand.
One has to ask oneself just how many of the laws that govern our country are filled with such inscrutable language. One also needs to ask an even more important question — since most of our legislators have admitted that they haven’t read this bill, and one can therefore assume they didn’t write it — JUST WHO DID WRITE IT?
© 2009, Tom Weeks
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