“It will be of little avail to the people,
that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous
that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if
they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such
incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what
it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that
be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?”—James Madison
Rube Goldberg’s cartoons illustrated insanely complex ways to do simple
tasks. He could have been a congressman.
The Affordable Care Act may be the most convoluted and tortuous act ever passed
by Congress. It is not a law to resolve an issue; it’s an odd conglomeration of
features to garner support or stifle resistance. Political bribes to vote for
the bill got stacked on top of each other until they built a leaning Tower of
Babel.
The law is so complex that members of Congress didn’t read it, journalist
didn’t read it, and even the major architects of the plan never read the
complete bill. Nancy Pelosi famously said they had to pass the bill to find out
what’s in it. There are nearly half a million words in the bill itself, and government
agencies have already issued millions of words enacting regulations. And this doesn’t
count the words written to delay, alter, or tweak the plan. And this is only a
small fraction of ObamaCare’s 800+ directives to develop and issue regulations.
Be prepared for chaos.
There is a reason few have read the law. It’s incomprehensible. Remember
when the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of the individual
mandate. As most people understand the mandate, you either have the minimum
allowed coverage or you pay a penalty or tax, depending on the day. Here is a snippet
of the text for the individual mandate.
