Saturday, September 12, 2009

Healthcare Reform, Illustrated


For those who - like me - feel embarrassingly uninformed about the details of healthcare reform, I thought I'd pass along this set of "napkins" illustrating the main points of the debate. I can't vouch for the presence/lack of bias, but it helped clarify some things for me. Also, there are pictures!

Click here for the full slideshow.

2 comments:

Amy said...

Thanks for that link, Abby. I actually just sent it off to my boyfriend who was asking yesterday about some of the details of the reform. We were discussing that a lot of the plans are really about Insurance Reform, but the big question is, how would the public handle calling this process Insurance Reform?
Also, there was nothing in the napkin slides about requiring preventive care with a baseline coverage for all patients. This is a topic I am very interested in having worked at Kaiser during the Thrive ad campaign, and also knowing a few close friends that do not have preventive care as part of their current employer-based healthcare plans.

timin chen said...

Now this is health care reform that the general public can understand. The pictures definitely help to keep it simple enough for the average person to follow along without getting lost in all the jargon. This was my first time hearing the phrase "insurance reform" to describe the health care reform currently on the table, but it makes totally sense, as there has been a disproportionate amount of time discussing insurance compared to the other aspects of health care (including preventative health, as Amy mentioned). As we all know, access to coverage doesn't necessarily mean access to care, so it should be interesting to see if the "insurance reform" will be expanded to include more.

Anyway, I liked this napkin approach of using pictures. Pictures and fables (as we'll see through the Kotter book this week) are quite simple but effective. Speaking of the Kotter book, if you're looking for a copy, it is not on reserve in the Public Health library, but you can find it in the book stacks at the business/econ library near Haas...if you're willing to trek out that far!