News organizations offer last minute decoders for health debate

Media organizations have presented a variety of health care decoders today, in anticipation of President Obama's speech tonight. Timelines, glossaries and a list of interest groups' ambitions seek to put the debate in context.

Associated Press: President Obama broached the topic of health reform in a Feb. 24 speech to Congress in which he warned of health care's "crushing cost." The AP charts the reform efforts this year day-by-day until Sept. 2, when the president announced his plan for Wednesday's address (9/9).

BBC News: "The various players in the healthcare debate -- from the White House to the insurance companies -- all want different things from the reform process." The BBC presents a chart that helps sort them out. According to the chart: the White House wants to make health insurance available to all Americans and lower the system's total cost; Republicans may want to stop that from happening to reap political gains; insurance companies want health reform that expands coverage, so long as they don't have to compete with a government-run plan (9/9).

ProPublica/American Public Media: A survey of readers and listeners maps out their worries - their insurance costs are too much, they fear losing coverage, some don't have insurance, others struggle to pay for drugs and some are concerned the high cost of care is damaging the economy. "[N]early all people, regardless of income, age or insurance status, spoke of making choices — life altering choices — in order to afford health care" (Haeg and Pierce, 9/8).

Tribune/KFSM: "Politicians and media often assume citizens are familiar with the ongoing legislative saga and the jargon and policy buzzwords associated with it." For those who aren't, a handy glossary could help catch up. The glossary explains what a co-op is ("[T]hey'd be 'owned' by members, not the government"), and who belongs to the Gang of Six (Sherry, 9/4).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.