Comments on Pax Plena: How Long is the Health Care Reform Bill?

It's good that the government took its time to...

2011-08-01T22:02:03.941-07:00

It's good that the government took its time to fine tune the health care bill, but up to this day, American people are still suffering from poor health care. Private health insurance companies are enjoying a golden age because of this.

cheap health insurance for individuals

It is advisable to get the most premiums from heal...

2011-06-10T02:25:49.638-07:00

It is advisable to get the most premiums from health insurance if you have money to spend.

You can adjust the fonts and margins of any docume...

2010-03-05T13:03:06.635-07:00

You can adjust the fonts and margins of any document to manipulate the length. That's the point of being able to adjust the fonts and margins. But the fact remains, the full text of the bill in it's conventional printing, indeed, was longer than War and Peace. Thus, the critique was factually accurate.

Even assuming your point about word count was valid, are you really arguing that 319,145 words is a short bill?

Have you looked at the spacing on the bill? The r...

2010-03-02T17:50:19.995-07:00

Have you looked at the spacing on the bill?
The reason it's 1000+ pages is that the font is big, it's double-spaced, and the margins take up more than half of each line. (Go here and get past the introductory stuff: http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf)

When you count the number of *words*, which is what the AP story goes on to do, the bill is significantly shorter than War and Peace.

Hello Anon- Well, the point of the piece I cited ...

2010-01-28T17:12:35.131-07:00

Hello Anon-

Well, the point of the piece I cited was about War and Peace.

If you read the original AP article I cited, you will see that it was written by a couple of reporters who were making hay about the length of the Senate Finance Committee Bill, saying that GOP criticisms of its length were really just 'theatrics,' and that the bill was NOT as long as the novel War and Peace.

The point of my post was simply to say that actually the Senate bill IS longer than the preeminent English translation of the work, thereby implying that the GOP critique was appropriate.

If you want to take issue with the substance of the bill, or question whether it was 'fishy,' understand that I'm sympathetic, but I have addressed this elsewhere.

The purpose of this piece was merely to fact check the AP and set the record straight, noting that, actually, the Senate Bill is longer than the English translation of War and Peace.

You realize that the point is not War and Peace? T...

2010-01-28T09:17:12.765-07:00

You realize that the point is not War and Peace? The point is that there is 2,000 some-odd pages. That doesn´t seem even a little bit fishy to you? You don´t think the Obama administration might have slipped in a couple extra clauses? They have quite a bit of space to do it in. Or do you really beleive it is only 2,000 pages of really long winded boy-scout honesty?