Where have the last three years gone?

The time must not have been spent reading the thing. At least not until the past three or four months.

You wonder what I'm talking about? Take a guess. It was foisted upon the American people more than three years ago when Speaker of the House, Ms. Pelosi, uttered those famous words, to the effect that, "We need to pass this bill so we can read it." Holy cow!

And where are we now, years and months later? Only during the past few months have all the implications and consequences and contradictions in that infamous Affordable Care Act come into play. And what do we have?

We have the most confused … uncertain … and mad American citizenry as all of those unexpected and so oft unexplainable interpretations we are given have come into play. The bill itself, numbering more than a thousand pages (depending upon who's counting) and the thousands of pages of implied regulations emanating from various agencies which are supposed to be the enforcement mechanisms that will govern/control our lives, have done little except further complicate the entire mess.

It's enough to make a giraffe gulp and regurgitate at the uncertainty in which millions of Americans find themselves as they struggle to meet so-called ever-changing deadlines and other demands which almost daily undergo new interpretative directives and dictates.

Who wrote the blasted thing anyway? Who read it, and who has read it now? I wonder if the president himself read the bill before it was passed? It's a cinch, most likely, that the bulk of senators and representatives had not. Have they read it today? Who has plowed through the thousands of pages of interpretive clauses and dangling phrases? Whose words decide on those ever-confusing final dictates? Some bureaucrats living off the fat of the land while the masses are being swallowed by the resulting confusion?

Am I mad? Mad is not the best word. Sad is probably a better description. I'm sad we have been treated to what seems to be an almost unenforceable set of dictates and interpretations which are further confused by presidential exemptions and waivers to certain groups, and more.

Perhaps it is time the ill-conceived, irresponsibly written, disgustingly interpreted and modified documents which have been thrown at the public all be repealed.

After careful deliberation, assembling a new bill in an understandable fashion, and finally, after honest debate, perhaps, perhaps a system of reforms and recommendations could evolve to provide assistance for those in need, thus returning us to the real moral and compassionate heritage that made America the great country she has become.

It would require statesmen and stateswomen rather than party politicians at every level -- executive, legislative and judicial -- for that to happen. Sadly, at the present, it seems an impossibility.

Wasn't that line, "Taxation without representation is tyranny," a cornerstone in the founding of our Republic? In today's proposed climate of change, what do we call "Taxation with representation?"

Frankly, it's time to throw out the dirty bath water and give the baby the soothing bath it deserves.

I'm not mad. I really am sad. And I feel that emotion is felt by many.

Dodie Evans is editor emeritus of the Westside Eagle Observer. He may be contacted by email at [email protected].