Random Thoughts on the Health Bill HR-3200

I downloaded this monstrosity. I was feeling guilty about having too much fun so I thought I’d cause myself some distress.

This thing is is huge. The one I downloaded (as approved by committee) was 1422 pages. Of course, the pages look like the one pictured. Huge margins (I assume for making notes) and line numbers (I assume for aiding discussion) and a rather large font (I assume for the aging governmental lifers).

The Declaration of Independence was only 1 page and it had room for signatures. This must be 1422 times more important. I wonder how they would have written this bill before the advent of computers? How would they have written this bill before the advent of typewriters? I have a new silly rule for our government to follow. When you are coming up with new legislation, pretend it is 1776 when you are writing the legislation. I bet there would be no more 1400+ pages of legislative lawyer speak. They’d find a way to condense.

Don’t pretend you are smarter than Benjamin Franklin just because you can wipe out a small forest with useless verbiage.

Thomas Jefferson invented something called a “polygraph” to duplicate everything he wrote. Try using one of these to write your bills, Mr. 1422 Page Bill Writer.

Anyway, I did a bit more research on Health Bills. I found one written by the government in UK. It was 72 pages.

If you click on the image of the page from the bill above, you’ll see that it is page 4. Down on line 22 (part D), I already don’t like that part. It’s redundant.

(D) initiates shared responsibility among workers, employers, and the government

I always thought it was a government “of the people, for the people”. So this simply should say, “initiates shared responsibility among workers and employers”. Well, I guess maybe by writing it the way they did they admit that the government neither works or employs.