So what? We live in a litigious society, laws are verbose because they have to be. Make it too vague and you just force the issues to be resolved in the courts making it even more confusing because the rules become written in case law.
Call me an idealist, but I think that's bad.
Like a tax code, usually these kinds of things end up working out mostly to the benefit of the larger parties who pay the most lawyers and professional staff to find and execute on the loopholes.
I do engineering for government contracts. The spec for the system I work on covers thousands of pages. I've read about 6" thick worth of it and that is less than 10%. But they detail down to the most minute thing what you are allowed to do and not allowed to do. The big picture stuff fits on the first 10 pages, and then they drill down into exactly what kind of thread you can have on a fastener and exactly how you are allowed to stress a weld for the next 1,000 pages. But it stems from previous experiences and errors, and it leads to a better product (though a more expensive one).
So I don't think "# of pages" should ever be a metric for judging a law.
But the bigger reason is probably that ultimately they know the key to maximizing their long-term profitability is to funnel as much money into Washington DC as they possibly can.
There will be more laws regulating healthcare in the future.
Baby boomers are going to be using a lot of healthcare in the coming decades and retired people vote. The debates will be no less political.
