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   Memo: The way forward on health care reform in 2010.
 A dark legacy of the Vietnam War is creating a whole new set of problems.
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November 24, 2009
LIGHT READING.... Of all the many Republican arguments against health care reform, the incessant whining about the literal, physical size of the legislation is comically foolish. And yet, rather than a grown-up debate about policy, the congressional majority remains obsessed with page-number totals. We talked a few months ago about why the claims themselves are so misleading. If you've ever seen the physical page of a bill in Congress, you know that it doesn't look like a traditional printed page in, say, a book. They have huge margins, with a large font, and every line is numbered and double-spaced. But the child-like complaints -- if a bill is "long," it must be "bad" -- continue unabated. In recent weeks, congressional Republicans have become especially fond of Tolstoy. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah said the health care reform bill is "larger than the novel 'War and Peace.'" Rep. Roy Blunt (R) of Missouri said proposals are "exceeding even 'War and Peace' in length." Rep. Joe Barton (R) of Texas added, "'War and Peace' -- some people consider it the greatest book ever written, but most people recognize the novel because at 1,284 pages its length is often the butt of jokes. Now imagine trying to read something that long overnight." Fox News kept up a Tolstoy fixation for quite a while, too. The Associated Press, to its credit, looked into this.
In other words, the health care bill -- the one that Republicans say is too burdensome to actually read -- is shorter than Sarah Palin's 413-page book. Can the GOP move on to new talking points now? —Steve Benen 10:20 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (22)Comments
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah said the health care reform bill is "larger than the novel 'War and Peace.'" Rep. Roy Blunt (R) of Missouri said proposals are "exceeding even 'War and Peace' in length." Rep. Joe Barton (R) of Texas added, "'War and Peace' -- some people consider it the greatest book ever written, but most people recognize the novel because at 1,284 pages its length is often the butt of jokes. Now imagine trying to read something that long overnight." I wonder if Messrs. Hatch, Blunt, or Barton have actually read War and Peace. Posted by: Mustang Bobby on November 24, 2009 at 10:27 AM | PERMALINKTrue, the bill's shorter than Palin's book. But Palin's book doesn't have any tricky polysyllabic words. -Z Posted by: Zorro on November 24, 2009 at 10:27 AM | PERMALINKEven sillier than the size of the bill is the complaint that it's full of "legal-ese". Of course it is .... it written to be a *law* !!! Posted by: G.Kerby on November 24, 2009 at 10:27 AM | PERMALINK"Can the GOP move on to new talking points now?" 209 pages? That's not long enough! We need health care reform that truly addresses the problems real America is having. 209 pages simply doesn't cut it. It's time to go back to the blackboard and come up with a true bipartisan bill that's longer than 209 pages. [/snark] Posted by: leo on November 24, 2009 at 10:29 AM | PERMALINKNow the question is whether Dems will get off their lazy asses and ALL start holding up the 209-page document and saying this is the actual bill that we're talking about. They should get snarky and say things like "I guess if you put one word per page the GOP could make this thing a million pages." Why oh why do I have to support such p*ssies? Fight back for chrissake.... Posted by: Homer on November 24, 2009 at 10:38 AM | PERMALINKTheir base responds to complaints about 'thick books,' because they hated being assigned to read them in school, too. There's probably not much more to it than that. yet the Patriot Act was over 340 pages long and the Bush Administration pressured Congress to pass it within a week's deadline without even reading it (only 2 printed copies were made available to the entire House of Representatives before the vote) - and I don't recall any of these guys complaining then. Posted by: andy on November 24, 2009 at 10:41 AM | PERMALINKI thought creating,examining, discussing, and then making law was what these ass holes are paid to do. What a remarkably low class of intellectuals we have "running" (or is that ruining) our Republic. Nauseating... Posted by: stevio on November 24, 2009 at 10:41 AM | PERMALINKThe bill would be a lot shorter if they left out all of the loopholes and concessions needed to please the folks who won't vote for it anyway. Posted by: qwerty on November 24, 2009 at 10:53 AM | PERMALINKAnd, as I've pointed out before, the Canada Health Act which covers their national health plan is a whopping sixteen pages long, English and French versions combined. From Steve's link to Politico: "This bill if you put in regular type style is about the same size as Sarah Palin's book," said Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska). "So it is not that big. There is a lot of show and tell and razzmatazz." Which would be a better read? "Depends if you want substance or not," he said. Sweet. Posted by: low-tech cyclist on November 24, 2009 at 11:09 AM | PERMALINKWhen you cover everyone and pay for it with general taxes it makes things easy. I can appreciate that...but you've missed the detail where we must allow somebody to have an advantage and when you are disadvantaged, your not it. That IS the American way. And with a mere 209 pages, I suspect some insurance companies had to be given the bums rush to get this through. Posted by: Kevin on November 24, 2009 at 11:15 AM | PERMALINKNow the question is whether Dems will get off their lazy asses and ALL start holding up the 209-page document and saying this is the actual bill that we're talking about. Better yet, they Dems should all carry around flash drives with the complete bill on it and just wave those around. And then suggest the Repubs pull out the big paper version because they are compensating for something;> I'm confused. Sarah Palin wrote "War and Peace"? Posted by: uncle toby on November 24, 2009 at 11:17 AM | PERMALINKHas anyone thought to compare programs like the highly successful Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund (MAIF) with Obama's Health Care Public Option? In MAIF you have a program designed to provide car insurance to drivers who have been denied coverage by two or more insurance carriers. Since car insurance is mandatory in Maryland the state government agreed to provide the service, which is funded entirely by premiums paid by Maryland drivers. Because government overhead in Maryland is much lower than in the private sector MAIF premiums are much lower than commercial rates. And MAIF is highly profitable -- so profitable, in fact, that Maryland legislators fight over how to distribute the millions of extra dollars it generates annually. I suspect the length of the MAIF authorizing statute is much shorter than the U.S. House's or Senate's health care reform bill but the idea is basically the same -- provide affordable insurance to at-risk people excluded by the private sector. And imagine that -- it costs less and makes money. Posted by: pj in jesusland on November 24, 2009 at 11:29 AM | PERMALINKI added up all the pages in the books by the losing GOP ticket on a whim and between Palin and McCain they've written 7 books that total 2,432 pages. Some backbencher should stack all those books on top of each other and say 'Voters rejected this [McCain/Palin] because they want this [healthcare reform], not stories about moose and strippers in Pensacola'. Posted by: joejoejoe on November 24, 2009 at 11:31 AM | PERMALINKInstead of saying how many pages are in the bill, Dem Senators should say, "I kept track of how long it took me to read the bill: only x# of hours." When the House bill was posted I read about a third of it *and* debunked a chain email a friend sent... in about 2 hours. That bill was 1000 pages. It really doesn't take that long, folks. And bringing up Tolstoy? War and Peace? Too rich. Posted by: Hannah on November 24, 2009 at 11:37 AM | PERMALINKThe bill is tiny. Heck, the whole thing fits on a single 1.44 M floppy disk. When was the last time you saw that? Posted by: Quaker in a Basement on November 24, 2009 at 11:56 AM | PERMALINKWarren Pease? I have been a part of the group of voice artists on the Hear the Bill project, and we have been volunteering our time to make recordings of the Senate and House bills so people can listen to the bills rather than read them, especially for those who are visually impaired. So I have seen the bills, read sections of them aloud. And this whole "it's so loooong" argument is quite aggravating as a result. For those who don't know, the bills are written in fairly large type and only 25 lines per page, double spaced. That's the version that they have printed out for their big reveals of how big it is. If you want to hear the bills, please check out http://www.hearthebill.org and see what so many voice artists have been volunteering their time to get done! Posted by: JonnJonzz on November 24, 2009 at 1:01 PM | PERMALINKAre Republicans smarter than a 5th grader? The word count for the Harry Potter books, which 5th graders routinely read in in 1-3 days. Remember that Rowling is using some English slang, mythological and historical allusions and a sizable amount of invented vocabulary. And your average 5th grader does not have a sizable college educated staff. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - 76,944 words Post a comment
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