Pelosi: "We Have to Pass the Bill So That You Can Find Out What Is In It"
PoliJAMCited 5× on HN, 2013-2018
740K views · 16 years ago · news · news
A short clip of Nancy Pelosi saying Congress has to pass the health care bill so people can find out what is in it. It circulated widely in debates over the Affordable Care Act.
Used critically as a shorthand quote when commenters complain about legislation passed without being read.
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5 comments from Hacker News
It seems to be happening more and more post-Obamacare. Further, this is an actual policy now, and this policy was created post-Obamacare (my incident occurred in Nevada, where they have not received permission to deny these claims like they have in other states, so apparently they feel the need to roll it out nationwide without telling anyone). There was no need for the policy before, but now apparently there is in an Obamacare world. But they can't expect people to diagnose themselves and determine whether or not a situation is an "emergency" under insurance company rules, since the symptoms of many non-life threatening conditions feel like they may be life threatening. Unfortunately, in capitalist economies, when you use the law to put the hurt on companies, they will pass that hurt onto unsuspecting consumers. The money will come from somewhere, and it's not coming out of executives' pockets. Perhaps this is why Nancy Pelosi urged lawmakers and the public not to read Affordable Care Act before it was passed it into law [1]. Had everyone read it, they would have known that problems like this would eventually arise. [1] ▶ this video
Nancy Pelosi on ACA: “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it”. ▶ this video And they did pass it, largely without reading or understanding, because of how voluminous it was. IMO bills over 20 pages long should be broken up and passed piecemeal.
A lot of the failures of the law I put on Republicans. You mean, the Republicans who were not allowed to see the bill at all before having to vote on it? It's hard to fix something you aren't allowed to read , let alone introduce amendments to.[0] [0] ▶ this video EDIT: added Pelosi quote video link
I grant that this is particular to ski towns, but it is still a good example of risk pool size [1]. I think the costs will go down when the whole nation is the risk pool, rather than state or smaller pools. To me this makes sense in that, as a Union, Americans migrate for pleasure throughout the States. This means that fundamentally the pool should be the whole country under the Commerce Clause (interstate trading definitionally going on). I know that adding infirmed people increases costs. The trouble is that the health insurance system of the US is not focused on individuals managing their own health insurance costs. Most Americans get their health insurance from their employers. This makes the ACA markets problematic because the limited risk pools above are further limited by the people utilizing the markets. Does this mean that the US should ban company sponsored health insurance? Maybe. I don't know. What I do know is that the Democrats tried to stifle debate and thought on the bill. It went so far as Pelosi saying you can only know what's in the bill once you pass it [2]. Overhauling the risk pool will be huge. That's probably in the realm of repeal and replace. What I doubt we'll see, since it would probably destroy the Republicans in two years, is the total gutting of the ACA and the meaningful, unstable gap. The people wouldn't like it, nor would the business community. 1 - link 2 - ▶ this video
Perhaps the statement is a bit dramatic. However, there's plenty of evidence of things not being right. From passing laws with huge holes primed for abuse (Obamacare) without even reading them and telling us "we have to pass it to see what's in it" [1] to blantantly changing votes to suit their agenda [2] and trying to justify spying on us because one day we might become terrorists [3]. Our representative republic has definitely mutated into something very different from what it was supposed to be. Just these three examples make the term "representative" --as applied to those who are supposed to represent us-- laughable. [1] ▶ this video [2] link "Let them do what they are going to do" [3] link "in case they became terrorist suspects in future"