Health Care: Which Chart Scares You More?

the boehner chart looks scarier; the Cohn chart uses soothing pastels, and mostly 'non-threatening' thin dotted lines and small arrows. And the Cohn chart is designed to explain the system -- colors actually mean something, and grouping is done to make the chart more understandable. Boehner's use of color (and shapes) appears to be completely arbitrary.

As a journalist, you should be pointing out these differences, and explaining to the public how Boehner is using this graphic in an intellectually dishonest manner, rather than simply saying "here's a graphic, and here's another one -- you decide!".

Ask Bernie's staff to prepare a single payer chart. Ask Boehjner whether he supports the much simpler, much cheaper single payer plan.

The republicans have yet to make either a single coherent argument against the public option, or offer an alternative to the current system. That they are treated by the press as participants in a policy debate is yet another instance of false balance. They opt out, but still get equal time.

Boehner's chart is pretty and his has pictures in it. Cohn's kinda of sucks with all the words and stuff in little boxes. And what's with that lame ass "you" seal?

BTW, do they have wallet sizes for those of us who want to share with family and friends?

The Boehner chart has connection lines "jumping over" each other to evoke the image of an electrical diagram, which I'm sure most folks find instinctively confusing.

Also, Boehner forgot the dragons and sea serpents along the margins.

SwampGang: No feeding Thursday, waddaya say?

"The republicans have yet to make either a single coherent argument against the public option, or offer an alternative to the current system. That they are treated by the press as participants in a policy debate is yet another instance of false balance. They opt out, but still get equal time."

True and yet their arguments are the ones that seem to be gaining traction.

They both be too confusin' t' follow, bu' th' Boner's be more likely t' scare people - mission be accomplished.

Arrgh.

I have been searching for a while for that original 1994 chart that Bob Dole used in his State of the Union response. Does anyone know whether that chart is online somewhere?

Could be worse. Maybe.

http://politicsoffthegrid.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/the-joker-nurse.jpg

The best illustration would be a bag of money representing what health care costs now (including the uninsured) and another bag of money showing what the Democratic plan costs.

Under the bags would be the estimated costs for the upper class, the middle class, and the poor. If there are cost savings in the new plan along with covering more people (including those in the middle class who can get royally screwed if their job does not aid in providing health care), then the new plan is better than what we have now.

I am disappointed that Boehner's chart lacks the distinctive orange that the man himself favors. Other than that, if you follow the magic arrow, it actually looks relatively easy for doctors to get to patients.
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The Cohn chart, on the other hand, looks like the spec for some sort of nuclear reaction. When you consider the impact of Boehner-care (sorry, non-socialized medicine) on most individuals and families, this seems grimly appropriate.
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And yes, no feeding today. We need to curb troll obesity.

Cole's is scarier...Why? Because Boehner's is a fictitious representation of what may (or may not) happen when health care form is passed. Kind of like using stories about the boogeyman to keep your kids from getting out of bed in the middle of the night. Cole's, on the other hand, represents the reality of the current mess of a system (insurability tied to empoyability, denial of coverage for expensive or "experimental" treatments, doctors having to get permission from insurance beauracrats to provide treatment, etc.) that we have right now. Kind of like scaring your kids about the dangers of crossing a busy street without looking both ways...

I like that Boehner's chart refers to me as a consumer for health care, I think that sums up the Republican view of Health care right there. A product they sell to those who can afford it.

Looking at the Cohn chart makes me feel like I am a sea turtle about to be strangled in a tangled drag net.
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I am actually sorta impressed with the Boner. The republicans are slowly starting to figure out how to make flow charts. Remember that flowchart they included in that budget with no numbers?
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/real-republican-road-to-recovery.html

They are finally mastering Viso.

Good for Cohn, and good for KT for showing us the comparison. Is there any explanation for the blue-faced and obviously white consumers and the African-American nurse in the Boehner Bunkum? There is a flavor of subliminal racism here.

KT - Wanting to avoid wasting money on Washington turf wars, don't you think culture and linguistic competency training ought to be under the jurisdiction of the Office of Minority health, as it appears now Boehner doesn't have it connected to funding stream -- standard GOP incompetentancy.

I'm feeling increasingly pessimistic about the Health Care bill Congress will eventually produce. In fact, I doubt Congress can produce an effective bill when it needs to weigh industry interest vs. public interest (and no, they are not the same). When I read stories like this (link):

"The nation's largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records.

Overall, health-care companies and their representatives spent more than $126 million on lobbying in the first quarter, leading all other industries, according to CRP and Senate data. PhRMA led the pack in spending and employs 49 former government staff members among its 136 lobbyists, according to The Post's analysis. Dozens of other former insiders are employed as lobbyists by Pfizer, Eli Lilly, the AMA and the American Hospital Association, each of which spent at least $3.5 million on lobbying from January through March.

..there can be no doubt that the system is broken. (For 1st Q lobby spending by industry and firm, read here- link) Absent serious campaign finance reform, I fear nothing will change (Obama?). There will be no great American leaders while our political system rewards those who help themselves.

OrangeMan's chart is about as useful as one of those electronics manuals written by someone who failed ESL – and that's exactly what Boehner intended. It's no surprise the Republicans have supplemented their verbal dishonesty with a visual component.

Why is TIME's Halperin using the completely unsourced and phony Associated Press number that the House bill cost $1.5 trillion instead of the CBO estimate of $1 trillion?
How disgraceful.

Ignoring the information and just looking at the chart it's really stunning how much more placid Cohn's chart looks. all those soothing pastels. And the boxes are in rows and almost look organized,despite the loopy connectors. So Boehner's looks discordant and kinda scary.

Agree with Basilbrush about the not so subtle racism. There seems to be an attempt to give the health care consumers different facial features, but they're all white. Is he trying to suggest that if the government's running health care "we" (and of course "we" are white) will get inferior care because it will be offered by (shudder) blacks?

On the other hand, he could just as easily have made all the consumers black and made the health care provider white, and made it look like with the President's plan "we" were going to be paying for a lot of health care to blacks. Hard to say. But it was not accidental - of that we can be sure.

I have to say, that if Boehner is supposed to be the poster boy for the benefits of our current health system, someone should ask him how he ended up so orange that he glows in the dark. Is this really the health care Americans deserve? An Orange Revolution, perhaps?

The Boehner chart lost me at "Federal Mandates for Website Design." That drove home the point that what I was looking at was probably a scare tactic, and not really worth deciphering. What a shame to spend all that time creating the chart without making it useful for furthering the discussion.

Did George Hamilton pull that chart off a 5 1/4 in. floppy disk that he found collecting dust in the House archives, where it has been sitting since the health care reform fight in and box styles all over the place. It looks like it was produced by a 15-year-old experimenting with CorelDraw in his high school desktop publishing class circa 1994.

I am, however, impressed by his use of PC-graphics. An African-American female doctor....a Benetton-like group of "consumers". Not bad, Coppertone.

All that said, St. Tropez Tan's is much more fun and friendly and colorful. It looks like the health care version of Chutes & Ladders of Candyland. I may pick it up for my kids this Christmas. Don't get stuck in the Health Insurance Exchange Trust Fund Swamp!

Aren't these the same people who produced a chart that extrapolated the national debt by drawing a random 45-degree line to infinity, and another chart showing what the debt would look like in when converted to a stack of dollar bills?

It's truly frightening that these people are tasked with governing the nation.

Glad TNR did this since in a vacuum the Boehner chart makes the future look hideous. In context with the other chart,, it creates an entirely different impression ... and hopefully, conversation.