You’d think they’d at least read the thing.

A Senate committee has finished a version of a sweeping health-care reform bill — but at least one senator admits he has no intention of reading it.

“I don’t expect to actually read the legislative language because . . . the legislative language is among the more confusing things I’ve ever read in my life,” Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Del.) told an online news service.

And Carper says he doubts his fellow members of the Senate Finance Committee will read their handiwork either.

The committee finished hashing out details of the health-care reform bill at around 2 a.m. Friday. But by yesterday, they still weren’t sure exactly what’s in it.

Carper told CNSnews.com that the bill was “incomprehensible” and “hard stuff to understand.”

The committee is drafting a summary of the awkwardly worded bill, which is aimed at providing affordable health insurance to all Americans. The summary would put the legislation in plain language for the public.

But at least one senator expressed suspicion that the summary would not tell the full story.

“The conceptual language is not good enough,” committee member Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told CNSnews.com.

“We’ve seen that there are side deals that have been cut,” Cornyn said.

“So we need to know not only the conceptual language, we need to know the detailed legislative language, and we need to know what kind of secret deals have been cut on the side which would have an impact on how much this bill is going to cost and how it will affect health care in America.”

A proposal that would have required the committee to publicly post the full text of the bill online 72 hours before the vote was rejected last week.

The 72-hour proposal wouldn’t have helped anyone, Carper said.

“I think if people had the chance to read that, they’ll say you know maybe it doesn’t make much sense for either the legislators or me to read that kind of arcane language,” he said. “It’s just hard to decipher what it really means.”

In his weekly address to the nation yesterday, President Obama praised the Senate committee for its hard work drafting the bill, which he said was crucial for economic recovery.

“Reforming our health-insurance system will be a critical step in rebuilding economy,” Obama said.

janon.fisher@nypost.com

