On Saturday the House passed H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act–1990 pages long and not a photograph, cartoon panel, or dirty limerick among them. We did count, however, 182 mentions of the word “subsection” in the first 300 pages alone, a pretty good ratio.

As you may have noticed, the length of the bill has been generating a lot of snide comments and critical remarks, (see above paragraph) mostly by those who oppose it.

Computational Legal Studies, however, a blog that “attempt(s) to disseminate legal or law related studies that employ a computational or complex systems component,” points out some interesting facts about the bill’s length.

The Democrats moved the health care ball a little further down the field this weekend, when the House passed its comprehensive reform bill by a slim margin. In order to gain the necessary votes, however, Speaker and Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi had to allow the inclusion of a restrictive abortion amendment. From CBS News: The [...]

Some selected user comments from the New York Times and Washington Post on yesterday’s news that Harry Reid will include a public option–with a provision for states to opt out–in the final health care bill This whole debate tells me that the next thing that needs to be reformed are the rules of the Senate. [...]

Unless states can mandate that all individuals and employers purchase insurance in-state in addition to whatever coverage they may have through another state I just don’t see how opt-out does anything but prevent insurance sales on your own state exchange.

Which is why I don’t think supporters of the PO have much to worry about as concerns Opt-Out. It seems to just be a sop thrown to more conservative states who don’t want to get tinged with accusations of collaboration with socialism (or something). From a mechanical standpoint I just don’t see how you enforce this.

The latest Auto-Tune the News was released recently, this one dealing in part with health care. Perhaps you haven’t yet seen this feature, in which different news events are set to song and…well…it’s kind of hard to explain. Just watch… Tune in on Twitter, too.

A little guerilla musical theater from the Billionaires for Wealthcare YouTube channel. Performed in the middle of an AHIP convention meeting. That’s AHIP as in America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry lobbying group. Thanks to our sister site EconomyStory.org for scouting this out.

The journal Health Affairs has posted another in a series of health policy briefs designed to summarize the key issues in the debate. Calling any of these policy analyses “brief” may be pushing it, but if you have the time and patience to wade through them, they can help clarify the various issues in play. [...]

Remember when protesters at this summer’s town hall meetings started chanting “Read the bill! Read the bill!“? Friends, don’t let this happen to you. The Senate Finance Committee has now posted its health care bill—all 1,502 pages of it—so that it’s viewable for anyone to see. A couple of quick observations: First, unlike a lot [...]

Seen the New York Times’s Health Care Conversations page? They’ve taken all of their reader comments on health care and categorized them into a rectangular grid made up of 20 areas like The Public Option, Abortion, Illegal Immigrants, and Health Care Abroad. The amount of space each section takes up on the grid is commensurate [...]

After reading countless articles and opinion pieces on the health care debate, and watching dozens of talking heads slug it out over individual mandates, insurance co-ops, and the public option, we remained thoroughly confused. So we decided the only thing left to do was to turn to the explanatory device of the napkin. This was [...]