My wife and I recently visited Senator Claire McCaskill's office in Springfield to discuss the health care issue. We had an interesting and useful conversation with her District Director, David Rauch. Both of us having spoken to him before, we share the opinion that he often represents the Senator better than the Senator does herself. He has always been courteous, reasonably well informed, and interested in our point of view. To me, this is the model of what a statesman does: facilitates active discussion on the issues in order to find the best solution; a statesman is always polite, especially with those with which he (or she) disagrees even if he is firm in his own convictions. It is regretful to me that I have seldom got this impression from Claire McCaskill herself.

In any case, the following is from the letter my wife and I sent to him following our visit. It highlights one issue we discussed: that of the enormous complexity of the bill and why it is directly damaging to the health reform effort regardless of its contents.

To: David L. Rauch
District Director, Claire McCaskill, US Senate
417-868-8745

Dear Sir:

Thank you for speaking with my wife, Cathi, and I this afternoon, especially so late in the day. We have found, although we disagree with the Senator on quite a few issues, that you have always been willing to rationally discuss the situation, bring up interesting points, and suggest alternatives to get at the heart of the matter. In short: a useful dialog. Being disabled myself and with my wife currently uninsured (small farm business), we have a deep and vested interest in this issue. We also need to serve our own constituencies and voice their concerns to state and federal officials.

Sadly, we have never gotten the impression of willingness to have open dialog from the Senator herself, either in correspondence or direct conversations. Many times the impression that she will do it her way and that their input is not appreciated hurts her credibility with the voter, especially those who are not already in total agreement with a policy. If this is not her intention, her willingness to work with voters on issues and understand their concerns is not being well communicated as it is something which comes to our attention frequently within the organizations we represent. As it stands, we would vote for you in an election before we would vote for McCaskill again herself. Perhaps that image can be corrected.

I wanted to touch on one issue we discussed more fully, to see if I could convey our specific concern more clearly: that of complexity. To be clear, the complaint is not one simply of the amount of effort needed to decipher the bill; as you say, legal language is complicated and must be technically precise to achieve its purpose. However, there comes a point where bills of this type reach a dangerous level of complexity which is not to their purpose, where neither legislators nor voters (nor those eventually responsible for implementing or complying with resultant legal code) can have a hope of understanding what the law really does, what it may affect, and what mistakes may lie in the wording.

I have worked on the technical review committee for ANSI/ISO POSIX and the Single UNIX Specifications (SUS V.2 and 3, POSIX 1998, 2003) where vendors responsible for complying with the standards request help and interpretations from those involved with the standard. We evaluated the interpretations request or report of conflict, suggested action by the vendor, and, where necessary, drafted suggested corrections to the standard itself to appear in periodic corrigenda. I have l also assisted organizations in implementing the DOD's Technical Architecture For Information Management (TAFIM), the Health Improvement and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the SEI's Capability Maturity Model and the Computer Information Processing and Security Standard (CIPSS -- credit card processing requirements), among others. These standards are considered quite complicated within the industry, require a significant investment in research and compliance, have contained confusing and sometimes devastating errors, and I believe are a small fraction of the complexity of most current health reform bills, including the 1900 page bill from the House and the "Baucus Bill".

The danger is that, being technically precise language, very small changes in any portion of such a document or typographical errors can have devastating consequences. Consider, for instance, language of the form, "Amend 29 CFR S.12 by replacing all occurrences of 'and' with 'and only'", how long it takes to understand the full consequences of such a sentence, the effect of a change between drafts of "and only" to "or" or an unintended "and" affected by the original change. Also, consider the importance to a health insurer of the subtle difference between "shall", "may", "will", and so forth, especially as applied to what the director of the "Health Choices Board" may later require their business to do. This kind of language, while clearly necessary to amend existing code, extends the corpus of the bill to somewhere between five and eight THOUSAND pages which need to be digested. Such a document would take the standards industry five to ten years to develop, technically review, amend, and finally adopt. I was involved with public reviews of drafts of the SUSV3 effort over a year before publication of the final document for committee votes and the effort had been ongoing for some time. SUSV3 was not as complex as the document currently being examined and yet, SUSV3 required 2 technical corrigenda to make critical corrections to the document within a short time of its publication. I know that the Congressional staff does not have even the resources ISO/ANSI applied to that document at its disposal for the current health reform effort.

Now, consider the danger of purposefully inserted language with the intent of slipping controversial or downright corrupt language past voters and even Senators. Consider the DOJ Attorney firing scandal and the fact that it was occasioned by a language change slipped into a defense appropriations bill by a staffer on the request of the Bush White House without any elected representative being aware of the change prior to the vote. Consider the recent scandal in Missouri occasioned by Representative Jetton (if I recall correctly) inserting language into a late draft of a bill which dramatically altered the way townships were created (and reduced the authority of the counties) in favor of a moneyed interest. None of the Representatives were aware of the change prior to the vote. Add these two issues together, that of typographical mistakes, conflicting language, and ambiguity with the ability to hide the complete works of William Shakespeare in an otherwise innocuous amendment, and you get the idea why consumer/voter/industry groups are very concerned about bill complexity in this (and other) instances. Does the Senator know, for a FACT that no such provisions exist in the five-thousand-odd pages of the corpus of the House or Baucus Bills (including code incorporated by reference)?

In short, even if we believed that many of the proposed changes were necessary and correct, which we do not, the scope of such an effort is technically impossible to get right in any Congressional time frame. It is quite possible to make effective change in smaller chunks of bill text which may be technically reviewed, politically debated, and rationally discussed, especially if we concentrate on simplifying and, in some cases eliminating, existing code where it is not currently accomplishing its job.

Simplify and eliminate waste. Let the states have a crack at the issues. Then step back and reexamine.

More than 85% of the public is currently covered (the 46 million people uninsured number quoted in a recent McCaskill mailing is completely incorrect). A large portion of those who are not are either doing so by choice or are here illegally. The remainder is being served by charity where possible and can be covered by much simpler legislation or programs where necessary (e.g. Medicaid with stepped premiums). An effort on the size and scope of the current House/Senate proposal seems reckless at the current time, especially given that funding for existing programs is often shaky at best and we have record numbers of constituents whose access to FOOD and HOUSING is suddenly threatened by the economic situation, let alone healthcare.

Personally, and in the names of the people we represent, we urge the Senator to simply vote against this bill in any form.

Once again, thank you for speaking with us and we do appreciate your time. We look forward to stopping in again at a later date.

Yours In Service,

Eric Vought, President
The Statesmen For Our Constitutional Republic ( http://thestatesmen.org )
"Gutta cavat lapidem"

Regional Coordinator, 7th District, Campaign For Liberty of Missouri ( http://campaignforliberty.org )

Eric and Cathleen Vought
Co-Founders, Well-Fed Neighbor Alliance ( http://wellfedneighbor.com )

Proprietors, The Misty Manor, Mercers ( http://mistymanormercers.com )

and writing in our personal capacities

. (EMV)

A Quick Note On Involving Our Families

As an aside, it is refreshing to be able to do more of the political work with my wife involved. With my disability, she often ends up as primarily responsible for the farm and in caring for our daughter who seldom wishes to sit through boring meetings. This is a shame because she has a lot to bring to the table in her own right and, in the meetings where she can get involved, people are often surprised at her contributions since they often see me and do not see what she does behind the scenes. She, for instance, is my major support in just keeping up with current events and connections.

If we are to be successful in rebuilding our communities, this can not be something we "do on the side". We cannot get to the point where our family does not want to take the time (or allow you the time) to participate in "another dumb political event". Rather, our families must be involved, including our children. We must have politics be an extension of our daily lives, not a distraction from it. We have to have meetings and events planned with children in mind, work together, play together, not just talk at each other. By getting children involved early on in community building, activism, and especially community service, we grow stronger, more capable, and better balanced young adults who understand why another boring meeting is important and when the magic of actually changing lives kicks in.

My folks involved me in charity and community service at a young age as did my parochial school. Always with the Christmas decorations was the little "milk carton" to collect change for the Holy Children Association or other causes. We sang at nursing homes and just spent time to visit. My dad and I worked the Knights of Columbus Spaghetti dinner, cooked by a local restaurant owner and proceeds helping people in the community. We went to other people's events, such as the annual pierogi lunch at St. Michael's during Lent (something I looked forward to all season). Some of my best memories of childhood are of working with my dad on some project or another with the church or community--- even just of helping clean up and chatting with everyone else afterward. I did not realize at the time I would eventually value it so much, but it charted a course for my life. Can we do as well with our families today?