Legal Code In a Version Control System?

coldmist writes "Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.) is on the Senate Finance Committee, which just finished work on the health care bill. The committee recently rejected an amendment which would have required them to post the legislation for public viewing for 72 hours before it went to final vote. Several senators felt that the actual legal code would be too cryptic and complicated to be useful. Carper himself said, 'I don't expect to actually read the legislative language because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I've ever read in my life.' So, why don't they put it in SVN (or some similar version control system) where people can tkdiff the changes (i.e. new legislation is in a branch) or output a patchset? If a bill is passed, it's merged into the trunk. It just seems so logical to me, yet I can't find any mention of doing this on the web. What do you think?"

Comments

Re:Seems consistent with every issue

[commodore64_love]

(holds up a pamphlet that's being passed-around to soldiers in VA hospitals). "Perhaps it is better to die and cease being a burden on your family..." - While the political rhetoric about death panels was vague, it did have a concrete basis. This was it. They (and I) fear this kind of pamphlet will be spread-around to everybody, as a way for the government to cut its costs, by encouraging people to just give-up on life and accept death. We already have heard cases from Canada and the UK about patients being denied care and left to die, since the procedure was deemed too expensive by some bureaucrat.

Even among younger patients, I've seen interviews with a British girl who was denied a PAP smear at ages 21, 22, and 23. She knew cervical cancer was high-risk in her family, and wanted to prevent it, but the government turned her down. At age 24 she developed the cancer.

If you think care is rationed now, wait until the politicians take-over.
It will make Comcast look like a nice company.