What just happened? Still processing.

I spent some time with the actual pages of PPACA this week (in my opinion, you can either pronounce it to sound like a town in upstate New York, or adopt a slight stutter), because I was getting the uneasy feeling that just reading those nifty summaries and implementation timelines that everyone's circulating might not be enough (this reminds me of how I try to resist opining on movies based on just reading the reviews).  I had to track down the one person at RWJF who had been brave enough to print out the entire law, plus the reconciliation amendments; then I started cautiously sifting through the table of contents to see what I could find.  It is not a task for the fainthearted.  Secretary Sebelius announced a "help desk" to guide Americans through the law but I always feel some obligation to learn on my own before I start bothering those nice people someone puts at my disposal to help me somehow muddle through.  Clearly, this is going to take some time.  But I found one thing to be oddly comforting as I wended my way through pages of text; it took me years of working at RWJF to truly understand that health results from so many different ingredients, including, but not limited to, personal health behaviors, environment, housing, insurance status, and the quality and type of care one receives.  It's impossible, once you really steep yourself in what it takes to make people healthier and get them the care they need, to believe that any one solution will do the trick for any one problem.  And so, as I was trying to dip my toe just a wee bit into the PPACA waters, I did think to myself, "Oh.  They got that."