Since I just dinged Senator Baucus for admitting to not reading the bill, I feel compelled to talk about this as well.
If you’ve been following me at all, you know my dislike of people’s supposing they know others’ reasons or explanations for things without asking. Here’s a perfect example. Here’s Kevin Drum picking up on another:
Megan McArdle reacts to a story from Kaiser Health News suggesting that healthcare reform might prevent universities from offering low-cost student insurance policies:
I imagine that the administration has been blindsided by this one….Had this been written into the law, it probably would have passed unnoticed, but the farther this presses into the spotlight, the harder it’s going to be to arrive at a politically acceptable answer.
Chalking this one up to the cost of passing multi-thousand page bills that no one has read.
Hah hah! Stupid Democrats didn’t even read their own bill! I imagine we’re going to be inundated with stuff like this over the next few years, as critics of reform crow over every story that suggests even the remotest possibility of some negative outcome on one benighted group or another. But here’s my prediction: virtually none of these self-serving pity stories will amount to anything.
You should read the whole piece because Kevin easily explains a number of things – some of which appear in the article Megan cites herself – that explain that this is likely much ado about nothing.
Did Megan pick up a phone and ask anyone who voted for the bill about this? Did she talk to anyone in HHS? Or did she decide – all on her own – that it’s because no one read the bill.
BTW, Austin touched on this tangentially right here. Why don’t people just ask?
