Politicians who want to increase the federal governments control of Americans access to medical services under the banner of reform describe the status quo as some kind of Wild West, where nobody has protection against greedy insurers, incompetent doctors, or dangerous hospitals. The facts show otherwise. As I have described previously, even with respect only to reforming health insurance alone, the egregious practices described by the ruling faction (such as cancelling a policy once a beneficiary becomes ill) have been illegal under federal law for more than a decade, and also under state laws.
If there are loopholes in the current laws that need filling, it is beyond belief that it would require more than 2,000 pages of legislation to do the job. It is almost impossible to describe how bloated both the House and Senate bills have become. Compare them to the legislation passed in 1965 that created entirely new programs, Medicare and Medicaid: President Johnson signed Public Law 89-97 in July of his first elected term and it was a mere 137 pages long!
