Why "2,700 pages" rings hollow

Anyone paying close enough attention to the health care debate has heard the Republican leadership reminding people that the health reform bill is 2,700 pages long. And Democrats have largely failed to find a counter-message that works. People are wary of ambitious undertakings that seem complicated and expensive and, most of all, that they don't understand.

But it got me wondering: just how long was the bill that enacted Medicare Part D? This is a prescription drug benefit program for seniors, much maligned by democrats as a handout to the private insurance companies that administer the benefit. The answer is that H.R. 1, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, takes up four hundred and fifteen pages.

Read the text of that bill here.

So, it took 415 pages to create a new Medicare Part D Program. At ~2,700 pages, that would make the Senate bill about 6.5 times longer. And yet, look at what's in there:

-Expanded coverage, including 30 Million more people on health care rolls
-Eliminates discrimination based on pre-existing conditions
-Eliminates wasteful spending from Medicare
-Establishes health insurance exchanges
-Closes the Medicare "donut hole"
-Eliminates lifetime caps on coverage
-Prevents people from getting dropped when they get sick
-Requires a high proportion of your premiums to be spent on care, not profits

Let's look at it another way. Medicare part D had about 24 million participants in 2007. That means about 57,831 people per page of legislation. Now, let's assume that with a population of 300,000,000, about 275 million would be required to have insurance under the Senate bill. That means that citizens would see benefits from this legislation at a ratio of, wait for it... more than 105,000 beneficiaries per legislative page. You could say that this is just the size of the effect, that not all of these people will "benefit" from the legislation...but I don't buy that for a second. I'd say that 2,700 is pretty economical for all that the Senate bill provides.

Of course, this is a little bit of a trip down the rabbit hole, because the GOP accusations about the length of the bill have never been good faith objections. They really just fit in there with the death panels argument, which started as a Republican idea in the first place. Nonetheless, this has been a fun little exercise.

The GOP/Tea Party Catch 22?

GOP Chairman Michael Steele is courting Tea Party activists and the Tea Party would take a prominent place at CPAC this week. I was mulling this over and asked myself about the implications of this. It struck me that co-opting the Tea Party might damage the GOP brand just as cooperating with the GOP will force the Tea Party to moderate.

Courting so-called values voters along side more traditional conservatives radicalized the GOP but it also moderated radical conservatives. Focus on the Family did not see its agenda immediately realized. Nor did the Club for Growth. And, it eventually drove more independent-minded voters out of the party.

Courting the Tea Party continues this pattern. The GOP needs Tea Party energy but can't give all the radicalism Tea Partiers are looking for. And the Tea Party doesn't have much of a choice but to consent to this without risking Dem wins, ala NY-23. Adopting the whole shebang Tea Party agenda, even if one were able to distill it from the anger and racism, would be Christmas come early for Democrats.

Independents won't break for rabidly conservative messages unless Democrats somehow condescend to them or stay aloof. The winning attitude is this: respect the voter. Scott Brown won precisely because he was handsome, neat, and didn't come off as a total whack job. He was unknown, got portrayed as an average joe, spoke to people's feelings and was there at the right moment in time. Many Tea Party activists operated in Massachusetts, but their radicalism and aggressive and intimidating activities gained too little attention too late to make any difference there. Their involvement didn't paint him in the slightest.

None of these factors apply in the same way for the 2010 elections. Another fall out between the hard right and the GOP establishment could mean more NY-23's. So, it seems, the GOP and the Tea Party need each other. And now we get to see if they're both ready to play at realpolitik. Can't wait to see what happens!

Precisely.