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If You Can Stomach It, Read the Health Care Bills Here!
by Brian Faas
What are people talking about this weekend? March Madness? Well yes, there's the opening round of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, the WCHA Hockey Tournament at the X, the various Minnesota high school sports tournaments, and a once-in-a-generation event of political gymnastics in Washington D.C.
That's right, people are actually talking about the pending health care reform bill, which I think is very encouraging. Please allow me to clarify: I don't necessarily think the bill itself is encouraging, just the fact that people who don't normally get involved in matters of public policy are suddenly interested in it. There are certainly some good things in this legislation and some not-so-good things.
If you listen to the left-wing pundits and bloggers, we will all die if this bill doesn't become the law of the land. And if you listen to the right-wing folks, we will all lose our jobs and go broke if it does. Either way, the legislative sausage-making process will make us so sick that we all land in the ER simultaneously.
I'm going to resist the temptation to tell you how I would vote on this one. There are some good ideas incorporated in the legislation, and there are a bunch of good ideas that were left out. I would prefer that readers actually stop listening to all the ill-informed boneheads on talk radio and 24-hour TV news, and instead delve into the various bills on their own. Make up your own minds for once.
Then tell us what you think using the comments feature below!
But first, here are the bills and related analysis for you to read in between sports contests this weekend. Each link will download a PDF file to your computer:
- HR 3590, the Senate Bill that passed Dec. 24, 2009 (2409 pages of text, 4.1 MB)
- HR 4872, the House Bill containing changes to the Senate Bill, to be voted on Sunday, Mar. 21, 2010 (2310 pages of text, 3.8 MB)
- The CBO Scoring Report on HR 4872, a 20-year cost/benefit analysis (25 pages, 1.6 MB)
