HR 3200 Considered As Software

bfwebster writes "Independent of one's personal opinions regarding the desirability and forms of government-mandated health care reform, there exists the question of how well HR 3200 (or any other legislation) will actually achieve that end and what the unintended (or even intended) consequences may be. There are striking similarities between crafting software and creating legislation, including risks and pitfalls — except that those risks and pitfalls are greater in legislation. I've written an article (first of a three-part series) examining those parallels and how these apply to HR 3200."

Re:Better Title:

[Donkey_Hotey]

Basically, this whole article is an excuse to drive page hits to this guy's blog, and to Slashdot, by trying to come up with some excuse to get huge argument started about health care on a technology site.

Yeah, like that's ever gonna work here...

Not Again

[Nom du Keyboard]

I, for one, do not need to see the current health care legislation cast in yet another new light. What's next?

Your health care bill rewritten as FORTRAN with no compile errors?

1300 pages of health care reform written in haiku (it might be more understandable this way)?

The health care reform bill run through deCSS?

Will it never end?

Wrong analogy

[PotatoFiend]

I just the other day got, a Congress was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Congress commercially. [...] They want to deliver vast amounts of campaign contributions over the Congress. And again, the Congress is not something you just deposit something in. It's not a big bank. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your money in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of cash, enormous amounts of cash. -- Former Senator Ted Stevens, (R) Alaska

Re:Better Title:

[Stormie]

Basically, this whole article is an excuse to drive page hits to this guy's blog

Luckily most of us don't actually click through to the article, then.

With all the cross references...

[wellingj]

...Maybe United States Law should be made a wiki? Maybe that would foster enough understanding by individuals to actually push for reforms that people want, instead of pushing for reforms that no-body can understand due to the limitations of the presentation media.

Disclaimer: If I were this system engineer, I'd scrap it all and start by looking at the original requirements, not all the feature creep requests.

Re:Something needs to be done as today's system is

[mwvdlee]

That's weird. When I walk into a hospital in the Netherlands they just help me and the healthcare system pays the bills afterwards. In fact I've been helped at first aid without people even asking my name; about as anonymous as your cowardly ass is here.

p.s. If you believe the healthcare system sucks balls, you should have gone to the building with the red cross on it, not the one with the red lights.