Monday, December 21, 2009

The Bill's Reviews

Comments on the healthcare bill from:

3 comments:

John said...

Here's another summary from someone closer to the medical community. Timothy Jost at Health Affairs has been following this legislation closely from the start.
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2009/12/21/the-revised-senate-health-reform-bill-cost-control-and-other-aspects/

John said...

Scanning the other comments I notice the only one with even a tepidly positive conclusion was Jacob Hacker, father of the public option. Dr. Josts's assessment linked in my other comment is little better and I'm pretty much in the same camp.

This legislation is historic only in the sense that it is a monumental federal mistake following decades of neglect, confusion, inconsistency and corporate manipulation at the states' level. Should it come to pass it will join the Nineteenth Amendment and Plessy vs Ferguson as federal missteps that we had to get out of the way on the way to federal policies patching up a national mess at the state level.

John said...

Oops. My mistake. I was thinking of the EIGHTEENTH Amendment (Prohibition), not the next one giving women the right to vote.

Come to think of it, the Nineteenth got a federal mistake out of the way... one enshrined in the Constitution itself. I think it was the twenty-first that reversed Prohibition.

I guess they all illustrate how pliable the law of the land can be. Stuff like this gives strict constructionists cold chills.