Washington's prescription

Healthcare | The House healthcare bill is only 1,017 pages long. What are you waiting for? | The Editors

Associated Press/Photo by Susan Walsh

Had a chance yet to read the House healthcare bill? At just 1,017 its prescription for how to cure the nation's medical ills is only 198 pages shorter than the latest edition of Tolstoy's masterpiece War and Peace.

While there likely will continue to be more war than peace when it comes to congressional debates over the controversial bill, actually reading line by line through its 2,541 sections is a slog akin to having to read the phone book. Just ask 180 House Democrats who last week attended a five-hour seminar in the Capitol basement. Leaders organized the staff-led tutorial so lawmakers could defend against accusations of not having read the bill. Lawmakers emerged from the closed-door session declaring that they are now armed to answer constituent questions during the month-long August recess. Alas, word soon leaked that the lawmakers were aided in the discussion by a 34-page summary of the bill.

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August 15, 2009, Vol. 24, No. 16

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