How The New Healthcare Bill Will Control Your Big Mac Urges
Courtesy of Tom Lindmark at But Then What
Joe Weisenthal asks why we didn’t know that embedded in the new healthcare bill is a provision that requires fast food chains throughout the country to post the calorie count of their offerings. To Joe’s credit, he takes some of the blame for the less than stellar analysis that the press offered on this historic piece of legislation:
Granted, the bill was over 2000 pages, so who knows what else is buried in there. But perhaps if the media were a little more interested in content, rather than the daily whip count (guilty) then this could have come up for debate while it was still being voted on.
Really, there was plenty of time for a lot of news organizations with big staffs to parse this bill and point out the gotchas. Joe is on the mark when he says that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Remember, that now the bureaucracy starts writing the rules. The bill was an outline and now someone has to interpret the meaning and intent and transform them into regulation. Will all those bloggers who insist that credit card disclosures be restricted to one page hold the government to the same standard? I doubt it.
I particularly like this from the NYT article that Joe cites:
“The broader issue is that this firmly establishes the government’s role in improving the nation’s nutrition,” he said.
Something the Founding Fathers forgot to include in the original documents. Glad we finally got it right.
Just the beginning folks. Enjoy the joy ride.
