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, cut and pasted here:

Number of words in H.R. 3962 impacting substantive law:

234,812 words (w/ generous calculation)

Number of total words in H.R. 3962: 363,086 words (w/ titles, tables of contents …)
Number of text blocks: 7,961
Average number of words per text block: 24.18
Average words per section: 267.03

Is this a Large or Small Number? Comparison to Harry Potter

Number of substantive words in H.R. 3962: 234,812 words
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – 257,000 words
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – 190,000 words
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – 198,000 words

Is this a Large or Small Number? Comparison to Other Legislation

Number of substantive words in Energy Bill of 2007: 157,835 words
Number of substantive words in Defense Authorization Act for 2010: 119,960 Words
H.R. 3962 is roughly 2x the Size of Medicare Rx Bill of 2003 (Given there is no public XML version of the bill, the Exact “Substantive Words” Number is not available)

Is this a Large or Small Number? Comparison to the Full U.S. Code

Size of the United States Code: 42+ Million Words
Relative Size of H.R. 3962: H.R. 3962 is roughly 1/2 of one percent of the size of the United States Code

So there you have it; don’t think of the bill as a long-winded exercise in congressional obfuscation. Just think of it as a really boring Harry Potter.

Implicitly critical observations about Congress’ sausage-making process are nothing new, by the way. This 1884 item from the New York Times called “What Congress is Doing” reads:

Full text of the House health care bill here.

Or try Wikipedia for a summary.