The reconciliation bill is finalized (barring the unlikely possibility that Republicans manage to rule any of its provisions ineligible for reconciliation within the next few days). You can read the reconciliation bill here: http://docs.house.gov/rules/hr4872/111_hr4872_amndsub.pdf
The real page 22 says nothing about auditing, but that people up to the age of 26 may remain on their parents' insurance plans.
The real page 30 says nothing about any government committee, but that insurance plans have to publicly report exactly what they cover and how effective that coverage has been with respect to outcomes.
The real page 29 says nothing about rationing, but lays out some definitions and clarity rules for insurers, and says that all full-time employees at an organization getting insurance from the same provider will be eligible to purchase the exact same insurance plans as each other.
The real page 42 says nothing about benefits, but that the government has the authority to monitor premium increases, and includes funds for the states to help set up their health care exchanges.
The real page 50 says nothing about immigrants, but establishes a high-risk pool to help people with pre-existing conditions before the rest of the reforms set in, gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the right to establish an appeals process for insurance claims and miscellaneous procedures to guard against waste, theft, and fraud.
I could go on, but I have places to be. If you want to understand the bill, the text is out there and it's not that difficult to parse. Read it yourself and don't rely on two-bit paranoid alarmist idiots to do your thinking for you.
"A math major at MIT before he switched to psychology"
How does someone go into a math major at MIT without a basic grasp of statistics? And to then spend years studying the field and other lab reports? How could he fail to pick this up?
The rumor was started by a professor who wanted to teach his students how easily false information could be imparted by authority figures. The lesson would appear to have been even more effective than he had anticipated.
We're warmer by a good margin, and the variation shows an extremely strong chronological correlation. Also note that the last few decades have been so warm (and affected the mean so much) that every decade prior to 1980 is now considered "below average".
Decade-by-decade shows a clear trend, although the skeptical may not be satisfied with AGW as an explanation. Regardless, random variance isn't sufficient explanation.
Correlating long bill length with corruption is a fallacy. None of the lawmakers read the whole bill in its technical legal form because it would be an exercise in futility - for virtually any bill, good or bad. It's the nature of our legal system (or any modern, complex legal system) that amending the law (especially in large cases like health care where there is a great deal of law already on the books and about few dozen loosely-related issues are being addressed in one go) that the resulting legal language is going to be confusing except to lawyers reading it very closely. For example, a great deal of the legislation refers to minor changes to existing laws, and hence would require reading those laws as well to read the bill comprehensively.
It's sort of like complaining that a program can't be good because the developers never bothered to fully read the binary produced by the compiler.
Which is not to say that all legislators don't understand the bill. This is what staffers are for - carefully drafting and reviewing legislation and imparting the meaning of it to their bosses.
Incidentally, there is at least one draft of the bill in plain-English form, the Senate Finance Committee bill. The Finance Committee, by tradition, drafts all legislation in legible English, with all members presumably reading the full draft, before handing it off to staffers to translate into legalese.
You could argue that all Congressional committees should follow a similar practice, although it's worth noting that in this case the process didn't do much to improve the bill - the Finance Committee version is generally regarded as the least-effective and industry-friendly version of the bill Congress has considered. You can, in fact, "do the math" on this by looking at the projected coverage rates under each plan.
The claim that this is the most corrupt congress in some time, while subjective, seems counterintuitive. This Congress is likely to pass finance reform within the next few months, despite that sector making massive contributions to both parties. Additionally, while insurance and pharma have had undue influence over the health care debate, their power is significantly less so than it was during the Medicare Part D legislation passed only a few years ago, in which they successfully got Congress to restrict the government from negotiating on drug prices. While I have many complaints about the honesty, integrity, and effectiveness of the current Congress, I would rank them as significantly better (less bad) than every Bush Congress.
