Study neutral sources. THEN offer an opinion.

I was at a holiday get-together the other night when, upon hearing what I do for a living, a local elected official began offering me his opinion on pending health legislation in Congress.

Here's the gist of what he said: It's going to make health insurance unaffordable and send the country into bankruptcy.

Coincidentally, this was the same day the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis saying that most Americans would see their health insurance costs reduced under the Senate health package, the one now being debated. 

It's generally described as having a better chance of enactment than the House bill that passed last month.

As for sending the country into bankruptcy, the CBO previously reported that the Senate bill would actually lower the deficit after the initial cost of getting 33 million Americans covered. It's an indication of how much the U.S. spends on treatment -- some necessary, some not -- that an $849-billion, 10-year investment could actually lower the cost of the health-care system, now running about $2.5 trillion a year.

The CBO is considered neutral. But somehow Americans aren't hearing neutral reports. Everyone I talk to seems to echo a party line as offered on one cable network or another.

No one should be expected to slog through the 2,000 pages of the bill, which doesn't make much sense to the uninitiated anyway. Instead, go to a neutral site that has translated the bill's main points into understandable English.

Go to Kaiser Family Foundation's new side-by-side chart showing the most recent iterations of the House and Senate bills (KFF is a neutral organization that studies the health-care system; it's not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente in any way). 

After you read the chart, THEN express an opinion.

--Carol Gentry can be reached at 727-410-3266 or by e-mail.