This one’s got a name, now. Chapter 224 of the Acts of 2012. Nobody will call it by its mouthful of a title, An Act improving the quality of health care and reducing costs through increased transparency, efficiency and innovation. The health care bill joins the pantheon of laws that old-timers know by chapter number – 23, 495, 203, 47, 141, 58, 305, 288 and so on. Calling a law by its chapter number is how you let everyone know that you know your way around the healthpolicyworld.

Being the first to announce the chapter number is a tradition of ours, of course.

There’s probably an old joke variation here, too.

The hardest thing is for people to stop calling it a bill, and start calling it a law. Months from now, though, it will just be a law. As we have been saying to everyone, the next stop, implementation, is what really counts. We can’t wait.