Decide Better!

I’ve taken some time to look through the Senate Health Care bill – maybe it was a waste of time. It’s more than 2,000 pages with a new 383 page amendment. It seems to include everything anyone could think of: an alternative dental health care providers demonstration project; geriatric education and training career awards; nationwide program for National and State background checks on direct patient access employees of long-term care facilities and providers; federal coordinating council for comparative effectiveness research – and much much more.

This led me to consider this bill in light of decision making and compare it to business decisions (Business Decisions). Why does it need to include so much? The political trick is to add special interests to major legislation so that these get carried along without discussion. The extension of company paid COBRA benefits in the Defense appropriations bill a few days ago was another example. This is really a poor way to make decisions. Each decision should stand on its own merits as is done in business decisions.

In making a decision on such historic legislation like this should senators read the bill in its entirety before voting on it? Yes. In business decisions, executives read major proposals and legal documents before deciding on them. CEOs and directors read 10Ks before approving them. But I doubt that many senators actually read the bill in its entirety before deciding on their vote. How can you vote in favor of something you haven’t read? It’s easy – it doesn’t matter what’s in the bill anyway because the vote is based on your political party: 60 to 40. Nevertheless, I think that senators should be required to read the bill before their vote. Maybe they should be required to take a test on it before they are qualified to vote. At least it would make voters feel that their representatives were actually doing the job we expect.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 at 7:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.