WhatFinger


We can come up with a law that is far simpler, and far more cost effective, and far more compassionate towards the disadvantaged

Even If You Love The Idea Of Obamacare, Consider This



Let’s set aside for the moment whether you approve or disapprove of Obama care. I think we can all agree that many aspects of the health care system of the United States needs improvement. Personally, I believe that it would best be improved by free market solutions such as allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines, but that’s beside the point of this discussion.
But, whether you believe that the answer is to fully privatize health care, or completely socialize it, or somewhere in between, consider the complexity of the bill. How many pages is the Obama care bill? At different times, I have read 1990, 2300, and 2700. Maybe it depends on the font. Or the House version vs the Senate version. Or if the Reconciliation Bill is included, or presented separately. By any measure, it’s a lot of pages.

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But, is it really that number of pages? I don’t think that it is. It’s much, much more. The bill is filled with references to other laws, bills, and regulations, and those references are not explained in context with the language of the bill. For example.
(2) in subsection (c)(2)(C)— (A) by striking ‘‘9.8 percent’’ in clauses (i)(II) and (iv) and inserting ‘‘9.5 percent’’; and (B) by striking ‘‘(b)(3)(A)(iii)’’ in clause (iv) and inserting ‘‘(b)(3)(A)(ii)’’. (b) COST SHARING.—Section 1402(c) of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is amended— (1) in paragraph (1)(B)(i)— (A) in subclause (I), by striking ‘‘90’’ and inserting ‘‘94’’; (B) in subclause (II)— (i) by striking ‘‘80’’ and inserting ‘‘87’’; and (ii) by striking ‘‘and’’; and H. R. 4872—4 (C) by striking subclause (III) and inserting the following:
WTF. Would somebody tell me just exactly what the hell any of that means? Is there one person on the whole freaking planet that can understand that gobbledygook? I don’t think so. Or how about this.
Replaced by section 10101(d). ‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—A group health plan (other than a self-insured plan) shall satisfy the requirements of section 105(h)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (relating to prohibition on discrimination in favor of highly compensated individuals).
So this paragraph is meaningless unless we drag out the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, and read section 105(h)(2). But guess what? You can’t find section 105(h)(2). In an hour of searching irs.gov, I found ten-page summaries, and three-page summaries, and twenty-page summaries of that section. All from links on the IRS site that point to non IRS sources, so these summaries all had a disclaimer to the effect of “This a summary, and not the actual law, and should not be the basis of a legal decision”, or similar wording. So, if you base a legal decision on the wording of a non IRS summary that the IRS directed you to, and some bureaucrat decides to make your life miserable, he can just blow the dust off of his secret copy of the actual document, and find something in it not covered by the summary, which you had no way of knowing, and he can stick it to you for violating a rule that NOBODY, not even the bureaucrat, knew existed before he started looking for a way to mess with you. I don’t mean to impugn all bureaucrats. I presume that most aren’t inclined to use their power as a hammer on other people, but we’ve all encountered bureaucrats who are petty, small minded jerks who take their frustrations out on the general public for no other reason than the fact that they can. There is not one single person on Planet Earth who can understand or explain this law in its entirety. Not even the people who drafted it, since it was drafted in pieces. You might find someone who could do a passable job of explaining pages 50 through 100, or 300 through 350, but no one who could explain it all. The examples I’ve given are just a drop in the bucket. The bill is riddled with references to other bills. My best guess is that if you wanted to really understand the President's health care plan, you would not only have to gather the two thousand plus pages of the bill itself, but about twenty thousand pages of other bills that it refers to. You simply can’t understand this bill. I don’t understand it. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t understand it. Harry Reid doesn’t understand it. And the President doesn’t understand it. So, to those people who are of the opinion that our country's health care needs are better served with a large amount of government involvement, please think about the complexity of the bill. Why did they make it so incomprehensible? If the Obama/Reid/Pelosi triumvirate really had your best interests at heart, wouldn’t they have insisted on a bill that could be read and understood by the average person? Even if government-managed health care is a good idea, do we really want it to be based a twenty thousand-page behemoth that no one understands? Haven’t we learned that the more complicated a piece of legislation is, the easier it is for corrupt people to twist it for their own benefit? Please don’t let this bill stand. Please vote in November for people who promise to repeal it. We can come up with a law that is far simpler, and far more cost effective, and far more compassionate towards the disadvantaged. That’s the way I see it.


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Neill Arnhart -- Bio and Archives

Neill Arnhart lives in Southern Indiana with his wife, step daughter, two dachshunds named Ricky and Lucy, an Australian Cattle dog named Indiana (Indy for short) an inside cat named Elphaba, and about a dozen barn cats.  Aside from living in the US, he has lived on the island of Trinidad, and in Venezuela, back when it was nice place.

When not rousing the rabble with sarcastic essay’s, he hides behind the secret identity of a mild mannered insurance agent, specializing in Medicare, and other matters concerning senior citizens.


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