Alexander (R): Health Care Bill Has Too Many Pages

Senate Minority Whip Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., explains why he doesn’t like the Democrats’ health care legislation:

“It’s still 2,000 pages, and it still costs more than $2 trillion when fully implemented — and that doesn’t take into account a quarter-trillion-dollar doctors’ Medicare reimbursement.”

I really don’t get this. Republicans must really think they’re onto something, because they continue to hold up the bill to show that it has lots of pages. Indeed it does. Bills are written in legal text, and in order to do things like create a new health insurance exchange, implement new mandates, and reform the insurance market, you need to amend current law in a lot of different areas.

Given that health care spending accounts for roughly one-sixth of the American economy, one should probably expect that a bill to overhaul the health care system would need to be pretty long.