The Idiot’s Guide to Health-Care Reform

By GottaLaff

Here's a link to the who's who and the what's what of health care reform:

Peter Keating offers a guide to the major players in health-care reform and looks at their goals, strategies, and odds of success.

A few excerpts, but please go read the "what they've done", "what they'll do next", and "what they'll get". This is literally just a smattering of :

Who: President Barack Obama
What He Wants: Substantively, to dramatically expand coverage while reducing long-term costs. Politically, to deliver a national health plan, succeeding where all other presidents going back to Teddy Roosevelt have failed. That’s all. [...]

Who: House and Senate Liberals
What They Want: The reforms now on the table in Congress. Current bills would extend coverage to nearly all Americans, requiring individuals (with hardship exemptions) to buy insurance and employers (above certain size and income levels) to provide it; expand Medicaid for the lowest-income households and provide subsidies for people substantially beyond the poverty line; require insurance companies to cover anyone, regardless of preexisting conditions; and create a public insurance option. They would also cost from $1 trillion to $1.2 trillion over the next ten years. [...]

Who: The Blue Dogs
What They Want: This group of about 50 House Democrats is dedicated to lowering federal deficits and creating greater health-care cost controls (though not necessarily reducing spending in their districts). [...]

Who: The Senate Finance Committee
What They Want: Nobody knows. [...]

Who: Republicans
What They Want: Whatever Grassley, Snowe, and Enzi settle on, the rest of their party is following a brutal strategy: Tag reform as budget-busting socialized medicine, kill it, and hang its carcass around Obama’s neck.