JeffL
3361
Not in any clear, united, effective manner. Those who followed this extremely closely, like most here, understood that. But the message to the American people was a muddled mess of arguments, much of which was between Democrats arguing amongst themselves.
StGabe
3362
I think a better explanation is that the Republicans immediately found ways to try and shift the focus towards all of the areas of healthcare reform that don’t have easy answers and to muddle the Democrat’s narrative.
Anyway, I don’t really agree with you in the first place. The problem with healtchare reform is that it’s so damn complicated and few people really understand why our healthcare system is so fucked. Simple answers are pleasing, and more easy to sell … but in this case I don’t think they work.
I’m maybe 60% confident the difference is just the media landscape. LBJ and Medicare didn’t have to deal with Fox, or Republicans owning the media landscape top to bottom.
JeffL
3364
Perhaps. But most of what even folks like us saw were arguments amongst Dems over what they would and would not include, even to the point that they failed to push it through when they had 60 + the House.
This is still where I had had hopes that Obama would have been able to use his speaking skills to sell this better to the public.
Do you think Obama actually did a worse job selling it than LBJ did on Medicare?
Timex
3366
The problem with healtchare reform is that it’s so damn complicated and few people really understand why our healthcare system is so fucked.
Ya, I think this is a really big part of it.
The good things about the healthcare bill, like preventing insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, allowing people to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26… Those are pretty solid.
But it shouldn’t take thousands of pages to make a law that does that. The law was so incredibly complex and long, that it was basically incomprehensible to anyone. Hell, I’m trying to figure out how long the law itself was, and even that is tough… I found the section of the reconciliation bill dealing with healthcare, and that is around 1000 pages.
I get that this is complex stuff… but it seems like if you try to make a set of rules, and the rules are so long, they’re inevitably going to have all kinds of problems. If nothing else, it’s going to lead to confusion about what’s actually in the bill, which makes it harder for anyone to make a clear case about its necessity.
jeffd
3367
Timex that’s just how legalese works. It’s a technical language. Also there is a LOT of whitespace.
Quaro
3368
It’s true. I bet most people’s estimate of how many words are in the bill are off by a factor or 2 or 3, given that the actual typography looks like this:
StGabe
3369
Voila, data.
Doctorate holders work quite a bit more than 40 hours per week on average and “across all eight fields of doctoral study, those employed in education worked longer work weeks than those in industry/self-employment or government.”
JeffL
3370
Yeah, if you download the pdf (and you should if you care enough to post in this thread) and read through it, you find a huge amount of the page count is the intricate details - not the “Whats” but the “Hows.” So, for example, if you are going to prevent insurance companies from kicking people out for what the insurance company considers “fraud” (and is actually something innocent like not writing down you had an ingrown toenail removed at age 11) you have to have a board or some kind of judging panel. So you have legalese laying out who will be on this committee, who can be and who cannot be on the committee, who makes the decision of who is on the committee, what criteria they can use in making their decisions, how often they meet, how can a person appeal to them, and so on and so on and so on. There are tons of details in something like this, and much of it is indeed written in that longwinded language of legalese.
The written language of the law can make for some interesting reading.
But, where the tire really makes contact with the road is in the regulations written by the appropriate federal agency. In this case, that’s often the CMS (and sometimes HHS).
Regulations deal with the nuts and bolts on a more granular level than what is described in any legislation, and the level of details is probably not even contemplated by the folks drafting the bill. On a per person (or patient level), they are of overwhelming importance.
The regulations can be a challenging document to read. It is legalese just like a law, but it tends to be even more technical since unlike the law it must deal with a much greater level of detail and nuance.
A CMS bureacrat might have a copy of the regulations on their desk – but what they will refer to for their day to day operations is an in-house manual that is prepared by their in-house legal team distilling the legalese containing in the Code of Federal Regulations into something approaching everyday common useage. Most bureaucrats aren’t lawyers, so they need a reference like this. What they invariably seem to get confused about is that it should only be used as a reference, not as a primary source of authority.
This invariably leads to long phone conversations with CMS employees who are adamant that they are applying the law correctly. What they mean is that they are following the rules of their in-house manual. When you point out that their in-house reference is contradicted by either the plain text of the actual regulations itself or in the odd case the plain language of the actual law they are supposed to be applying, all you get is dead air on the opposite end of the phone.
It’s an enormously frustrating experience. It doesn’t matter who is in the White House, or in Congress, or even on the Supreme Court, the bureaucratic nightmare gets worse every year.
Timex
3372
I got the impression that this bill was long in comparison to most bills, but that might have just been what the hype machines were spinning that day.
Given it’s length, even with the whitespace, it still seems like it would be very difficult for an individual to really get a solid grasp of what the details of the law actually meant.
Remember when Pelosi said, “We have to pass the law so you can find out what’s in it”?
That didn’t play real well with the general population.
Well, she could have phrased it slightly differently. “We’re trying to tell you what’s in it, but there’s a whole bunch of people whose job it is to lie to you, confuse you, or misdirect you about what’s in it, pretending that subsidising the already existing end-of-life counselling services means the creation of death panels, and so on. This noise machine works so well that no matter how clearly and simply we explain the many benefits of this bill, what you’re going to be hearing is a very poor representation of the reality. But if we pass it, you’ll discover the practical reality of what we’ve created is very good; nobody can convince you that the law creates death panels if the law is in effect and there are no death panels. You’ll get to see that this is actually a bill that benefits pretty much everyone, to a very high degree, and no one will be able to credibly say that black is white and up is down when you’re actually living in it. So, it’s a sad state of affairs for what was once a great democracy, but at present the only way for you to get a real picture of this bill is for us to pass it before you’ve had a chance to fully understand it.”
That what I take to be the meaning of what she’s saying. But then, that’s not a one-line soundbite that can be twisted to make her sound like evil personified, so there’s no chance that a quote like that would have made the news.
jeffd
3374
This might be true. Still, pointing at the “length” of a bill as a method of criticism is pretty vapid. If that’s the best you’ve got…
Given it’s length, even with the whitespace, it still seems like it would be very difficult for an individual to really get a solid grasp of what the details of the law actually meant.
Yes and no. One of the best traditions in the Senate is that the Finance Committee reports all of its bills in plaintext. This plaintext is then translated into legalese. Pretty much the entire rest of Congress works the other way around; the bills are reported in legalese and plaintext translations are provided. I’m not sure if there’s an “official” plaintext translation or if it’s just something that gets staffed out, though.
Remember when Pelosi said, “We have to pass the law so you can find out what’s in it”?
That didn’t play real well with the general population.
Yeah that was a dumb thing to say. It’s obviously not what she meant, though.
Anyway, this entire line of criticism is ridiculous. You hear it from GOP operatives all the time and it’s the height of dishonesty. “The bill is a thousand pages, we don’t even know what’s in it!” That’s because you weren’t paying attention. I’m just some dude on the internet and I have a pretty firm grasp of what’s in this bill; I’m sure that anyone who cared to really go in depth could do so.
Houngan
3375
Exactly, there were summaries of the actions in the bill posted on CNN and elsewhere within a day or two, and they gave me more information on the bill than I’ve ever heard mentioned in any newscast or politician’s speech. Death Panels were the most egregious abuse, but also the constant misrepresentation of when, who, and how the mandate would be handled still go on today.
Timex, I’m not doing this to try and prove a point, but I would be curious to hear what you know about the mandate, as in how much detail you’ve been exposed to about how it will actually work. I’m sure you know more than the average Joe, but unless you’ve done some real digging you’re likely biased by the shitty reporting and debate that has gone on.
There was an excellent segment on NPR recently that did a Q&A format on the bill, and it really summed up what was happening in a few minutes.
H.
Timex
3376
I think Jason on these forums actually pointed me to some good information about stuff that was in the bill, and I’m not in the camp of people who are rabidly against it. However, at the same time, it seems like they may have been able to make something that would be easier to grasp. I think someone else here pointed to the actual regulations which are needed to enforce the bill, and I saw somewhere that those regulations are something like 10,000 pages, which really is a mountain of crap to wade through.
My main issue that I was talking about here, which folks seem to agree on, is that it wasn’t really presented to the American people as well as it could or should have been.
Houngan
3377
No argument there, and if you’ve already done your homework then you aren’t the droid I’m looking for. I was just curious what the non-lefties knew about it at this stage.
I think the problem is that it would take about five minutes of uninterrupted explanation to cover the bill, and that’s not good TV these days. Instead you get five people shouting at once, the viewer’s pulse goes up a bit, they get a tiny endorphin hit, and tune in next time.
H.
Timex
3378
The problem I have with the 5 minute explanation is that I can’t really confirm if it’s true or not. I like to have direct access to information, to see the guts of what is actually said, to confirm what the folks in Congress say.
The problem I have with this particular issue is that there seem to be two levels… super high-level snippets, and then mountain of incomprehensible text. I’m looking for something that offers the high level stuff, and then goes into some decent level of detail from there to explain some of the underlying mechanisms by which stuff is supposed to actually work, but without getting into the literal legalese of the law. But I don’t think that kind of thing exists, or at least I haven’t found it yet.
Houngan
3379
Would this do the trick? http://healthreform.kff.org/timeline.aspx?gclid=CKnzk-381aYCFUGo4Aodmh2RHg
Timex
3380
That’s definitely a step in the right direction, thanks.
