Everything You Need to Know About Health Care

For what it's worth, here are some links to the most helpful and insightful articles I've read on the subject of health care reform:

• Health Care Reform: A Simple Explanation (Politifact): This should be required reading. Politifact has put together a clear outline of what is and is not in the health care bills before the House and Senate.


• "Seven Falsehoods About Health Care" (Fact Check.org): Fact Check.org addresses misguided memes such as "the government will decide what care I get" and "private insurance will be illegal," as well as the president's claim that the new health care plan will be deficit-neutral.


• "In America, Crazy Is a Pre-existing Condition" (Washington Post): It's not directly related to health care, and I hate to go negative, but Rick Perlstein gives a fascinating history of how the political fringe has tried to derail civil debate and how the Internet and cable news have given legitimacy to these extremists.


• "Life After the Death of the Public Option" (FiveThirtyEight): Nate Silver believes that the public option is dead, but he doubts that it was ever really "alive."


• "Oh Look! Kill The Public Option, And Republicans Still Complain About Socialism!" (Wonkette): There's a good chance that Democrats will drop the public option from health care legislation to appease Republicans, but the RNC doesn't seem to care.