If only Congress could write legislation with as much needed pithiness, clarity and forethought as our founders did in writing the Constitution. It is the oldest and shortest written constitution of any major country in the world, contains only 4,400 words, and only took 100 days to write. All the framers read and understood it, too.

President Obama was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009 and armed with a Democratic-controlled House and Senate was able to sign the 961-page and 425,116 word Affordable Care Act into law 416 days later. Unlike the framers of the Constitution, though, Congress didn’t take the time to read it.

Obamacare, when fully implemented, will become 17 percent of the U.S. economy. But the writing of the 425,116-word law is not the end of the story. The written regulations for administering Obamacare are estimated to be 6 1/2 times the length of the statute itself. It has grown to 2,864,094 words. Just how long are 2,864,094 words? By one estimate the Bible contains 830,314 words. If you combine the Obamacare statutes with its regulations, they become almost four times the length of the Bible. Is this a road map that leads to easy understanding and clarity?

To put this all in perspective it would take someone reading at 200 words a minute approximately one work week to read the Obamacare lawitself and another 238 hours of non-stop reading for the regulations. That’s 5.9 40-hour work weeks to read just the 2.8 million word regulations. Some may question the 200 words a minute as being too slow but remember this law is written in legalese and would not read like a novel. And Max Baucus scolds HHS for not doing a better job of explaining this outrageously long document to the American People.

Is it any wonder that Nancy Pelosi informed us they had to pass the law to find out what was in it? Even Max Baucus, head of the Senate Finance Committee that supposedly wrote the law, admitted in a town meeting, that he had not read the entire text of the final law. “I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill. You know why? It’s statutory [legalese] language,” Baucus said. He further explained, “We hire experts.” Did those same hired experts write the law, too?

Who really wants Obamacare? Perhaps we should be asking who does not want to be included in the coverage as the law is written. The IRS workers, the ones responsible for administering the affordable Care Act, do not want it for themselves. One survey reveals that 53 percent of eligible voters disapprove of the law. Congress, too, has requested to be exempt from being required by the law to enroll in the exchanges and give up their Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. This all comes after leaders of three large labor unions fired off a strongly worded letter to congressional leaders saying, “Unless you and the Obama administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA [Obamacare] will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40-hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”

It appears as though President Obama has ridden in on his white horse and saved the “favored class” (Congress) from experiencing the brain drain and saved them from eating their own cooking. He has apparently secured a ruling permitting funding to offset the increase in Congress’ premium costs under the law.

Remember the president’s promise that, “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health plan, period. No one will take it away.” However, many insurance companies don’t like the law and are opting out of many of the exchanges. They fear that the young more healthy individuals will choose to pay the penalty leaving them to insure only the older patients with more serious and preexisting conditions. An independent study found that as many as 30 percent of employers will discontinue offering workplace insurance. Even the nonpartisan CBO has predicted that several million will lose their insurance offered by employers.

Ultimately, what might be the result of all this confusion? Two things have been made clear. The first is that Harry Reid has gone on record as stating his goal is to move Obamacare to a single-payer system. The second is that, according to a Forbes article, they have determined that Obamacare will more than double the cost of insurance on the individual market and this may play into the hands of Harry Reid and other progressives to accomplish his goal.

Still is a resident of Kalispell.