Congressman Kevin Brady from Texas distributes this visualization of reformed health care in the US (click for a bigger picture):
Here’s a PDF at Brady’s page, and a local copy of it.
Complexity has its costs. Beyond the cost of writing it, learning it, following it, there’s also the cost of checking it. John Walker has some funny examples of what’s hidden in the almost 8000 pages of IRS code.
Text mining and applied statistics will solve all that, hopefully. Anyone interested in developing a pork detection system for the legislation? Or an analysis of how much entropy to the legal code did each congressman contribute?
There are already spin detectors, that help you detect whether the writer is a Democrat (“stimulus”, “health care”) or a Republican (“deficit spending”, “ObamaCare”).
D+0.1: Jared Lander points to versions by Rep. Boehner and Robert Palmer.
I like it! Really this doesn't need to be a partisan issue at all. We've just been comparing health plans under the private system, and it's a horrible mess. Maybe someone could make a similar map of the existing system and them compare it to the much more pleasant systems of Taiwan, France, etc. It would be great if there could be a bipartisan effort to simplify our health care paperwork.
About a year ago Rep. Boehner released a similar health care visualization (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/07/when_health-care_reform_stops.html). Robert Palmer, not the singer, put his version, "Do not f*** with graphic designers," on flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertpalmer/3743826461/).
Maybe we need the statisticians' version?
Seems to be a very nice challenge to develop a detection system for the legislation. Do you suggest any tool to start thinking about that? I'm really interested in think about such possibilities.
Seems like you should judge the complexity relative to other programs of equal size. To put it back on a partisan footing, you could find programs that Brady supported that have equally messy corresponding charts.
This NY Times interactive budget graphic might be a good place to start for finding programs of equal size.
there are similar convolutions one can draw about how many students medical schools can admit, where they intern, how many vacancies there are to fill..on and on at every level.
The medical lobby beats the pants off the military industrial complex, and we all pay the price…except the elite.