John

Sometimes it’s advantageous to read over the words of statesmen our country has been blessed with in the past. Today we have no statesmen, only politicians whose careers are dependent upon selling out the good of the country for a few more votes or a nice cushy job when they leave office.

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if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.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 “The Federalist #62″

Have you looked at any of the Health Care bills? some of them read like this:

(B) EXCEPTION FOR LIMITED BENEFITS PLANS- Subparagraph (A) shall not apply to an employment-based health plan in which the coverage consists only of one or more of the following:

(i) Any coverage described in section 3001(a)(1)(B)(ii)(IV) of division B of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).

(ii) Excepted benefits (as defined in section 733(c) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974), including coverage under a specified disease or illness policy described in paragraph (3)(A) of such section.

(iii) Such other limited benefits as the Commissioner may specify.

-Library of Congress

Now, I’m a pretty smart guy, but I don’t know what that means and I’ve got to go look up all of those varied laws and statues (because we can’t just say what we’re doing, we have to make it complicated) and this is only one of four health-care bills being circulated through our congress right now. Or, just do a search for “health care” and you get 673 bills to go through.

Given that I need to keep current on all the

1. bills that become law and all the bills that are affected by each law,
2. plus each ruling and decision by every single regulatory agency,
3. plus each bill that becomes law in the state of Texas,
4. plus each ruling and decision by every Texas agency,
5. plus each update of the IRS code (even tax pro’s don’t know the entire thing)

how am I supposed to have any time left to actually live?

I seriously doubt that there is a single person in this entire nation that knows every single law or ruling that affects them. We simply go about our lives as best we can, doing what we know is right and hope is legal.

Madison’s foresight was incredibly accurate:

Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any way affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest, reared not by themselves, but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow-citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few, not for the many.