WASHINGTON   –  “Hours after a major legislative proposal was released this week, I dropped a big binder on my desk.

The first draft of a health care bill submitted in the U.S. House of Representatives is more than a little light reading.  It’s heavy in two aspects: it’s over 1,000 pages long, and it contains more than $1 trillion in spending.

I wasn’t twenty pages into reading the bill when a new version was issued, so I started all over again.  Here is a sample of the legislation’s exciting verbiage: “For purposes of Subparagraph A, the ‘applicable national average premium’ means, with respect to any taxable year, the average premium (as determined by the Secretary, in coordination with the Health Choices Commissioner) for self-only coverage under a basic plan which is offered in a Health Insurance Exchange for the calendar year in which such taxable year begins.”  And that’s only page 168!

Now, I enjoy reading the bills, I take it as a serious responsibility of my service in Congress, and I am excited that the Congress is taking up health care reform to have an earnest discussion about the single-greatest challenge facing our federal budget.

At the same time, I have to report that this health care bill, called the “Tri-Committee” bill, is a big disappointment to me.  The contents of this bill should have been familiar to members of Congress before the thousand-page document landed on our desks, but is was not.  It was written behind closed doors, and the suggestions of many well-intentioned members from both sides of the aisle were left out.

The Tri-Committee bill, as a result, does not include the focus on lowering health care costs for all Americans the way a sweeping health care reform bill ought.  If you share my concern that it is hard to write a solid piece of 1,000-page legislation in a few weeks, then I hope you will continue to watch this debate closely.

We need to start again and get off on the right foot this time.  As taxpayers, as health care customers and as Americans, we are all vested in the effort to lower costs and improve access, but the “Tri-Committee” bill would actually prevent us from attaining these goals.  We all share an interest in lowering the costs of prescription drugs, but the first legislation we’ve seen virtually ignores the fact that 80 percent of Americans aren’t taking their prescriptions in the prescribed doses.  We all want Americans to be able to access the world’s best system of health care here at home at a reasonable cost, but we need to expand access by involving them in their own health care decisions and making them stakeholders -- not by heaping the cost of a "government-controlled" system on small businesses and depending on a very few taxpayers.

Congress is going to, I sincerely hope, have a lengthy and deliberate debate on health care reform.  We need to have a discussion about how to preserve the doctor-patient relationship, how to increase the number of Americans working in health care professions, and how to transform a health care system that generally treats only illness into a system that also promotes wellness.

Everyone ought to come to the table, regardless of where in the country they’re from or what politics they choose.  For a debate this important, we need cost-saving ideas from every quarter.  When we have a deficit-neutral bill, or at least one that makes a sound investment in meaningful, sustainable reform, then we’ll happily be able to do a little light reading of a bill that matters.”