Monday, August 31, 2009

Figured It Out Yet?

In New era of opacity, Pundette writes:

What's in the healthcare bill passed by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee? That's for Sen. Dodd and company to know and for you to find out.

The cynic in me believes that the Dems would prefer we don't what is the bill until it has been passed in to law. Honestly, their "trust me" game has grown thin.

I note that Prof. Jacobson is on day two of trying to decipher HR 3200 and I'm sensing frustration:

It is hard to figure out this language, because of the use of the words “in the matter” and the reference to “paragraph (3).” There may be a logic to this wording, but it is not obvious. I think it means that penalties for violation of this new paragraph 10 will be $15,000 for each day on non-compliance. So if someone delays for a week, the penalties would be $105,000.

Unlike the provisions of section 1721, examined in the prior post, these penalty provisions are not incomprehensible. But they are hard to follow, requiring a time-consuming comparison of existing statutes and other provisions in the House Bill.

If the provisions are hard to follow for a legal scholar, what chance do the rest of us have. Back at Pundette we see that even our esteemed senators can't make head or tails:

The whole process was so haphazard that at one point during the committee
mark-up Barbara Mikulski, the Democrat from Maryland, declared: "Giving me
language on little pieces of paper on which I'm going to commit the sacred
fortunes and honor of the United States for decades, this is not the way to go.
We can't do this on the backs of envelopes."

So tell me again, why are we trusting one-seventh of our economy to these people?

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