US Healthcare Reform Debate for Dummies

I'm a bit ashamed by my cluelessness regarding the healthcare debate raging in the states these past few months. I know there IS a debate. I know it is quite heated and involves a lot of "town hall" meetings around the country. But given the lack of coverage in regional publications here, I don't really know what they're arguing about.

I suspect that they don't either; the few excerpts I have heard about the debate go something like this:
One guy says "we have the worst healthcare system in the world in terms of value for money and we need to fix it."
Then another guy says "this reform means we'll have SOCIALIZED medicine!" and the crowd gasps.
Then some loony in the back of the room screams "Obama is a gay terrorist muslim socialist who is going to kill your grandparents!"

And this is about as deep as the public debate seems to go. I find this a little frustrating, especially that critique of the reforms is often limited to the word "socialist" which is generally bandied about as if it is synonymous with "apocalyptic." It's not actually a bad word. It's just a system of political organization like any other, with pros and cons that can be debated like any other. If you put it in a sentence, you don't automatically win the debate! This is similar to Rule #1 of debates about ethics: If you attempt to invoke Nazism as your trump card, you lose and you need to go home.

Anyway, despite my raging against ignorant debaters, the fact is that I can scarcely say more myself because I don't know anything about the proposed reforms. I sheepishly admitted as much to a girl I met in August, who happens to work in DC as a healthcare policy researcher and I asked her if she could recommend any good summaries online to bring me up to speed. Surprisingly, she had trouble thinking of any source that is both smart and easy to digest.

Hence my excitement when I recently discovered just such a source! The ever-brilliant HowStuffWorks podcast (which you can download for free from iTunes) did a four-part series on the healthcare debates and it is interesting, funny, informative, and easy to listen to. They cover:
1) How Healthcare in the United States works Right Now
2) President Obama's Healthcare Plan: Soup to Nuts
3) Rumors, Myths and Truths Behind Obam's Healthcare Plan
4) Healthcare systems Around the World

The first episode is a little slow, but I found the others genuinely informative. So, if you're as clueless as I am (or the great majority of my enormous countrymen are), then give it a listen...