At 11 pages, a health plan we can work with

Finally, a health care proposal I can hold in my hands.

That doesn't mean I'm ready to endorse President Barack Obama's proposal to get health care reform moving. It means something more than that.

For the first time in the furious national debate on health care reform, Obama's proposal creates a ledge for us to stand on, a place where mere mortals have a chance to crowd out flamethrowers.

Already, one thing is clear: The system needs reform.

And that's become even clearer as the Great Recession has claimed too many Americans' health care insurance, along with their jobs.

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What should reform look like? For months, the arguments over what was put in or left out of Senate and House proposals has left most of us aggressively confused.

Obama's 11-page proposal - which I printed out from the White House Web site Monday - could be the "Health Care for Dummies'' we've been waiting for, an overdue entry point for ordinary Americans to begin to sort through what's become a political morass.

Obama's proposal states clearly what Obama wants. And Monday, I discovered, it includes stuff I want, too:

• Policies aimed at keeping premiums down and preventing denial of needed heath care as well as tamping down abuses by the insurance industry.

• An end to health care discrimination against Americans with pre-existing conditions.

The big picture - which includes a super heavy dose of the requisite political promises to fight fraud, waste and abuse - sounds terrific. Especially the part about his plan's not adding to the national deficit and the idea of reviewing big rate increases.

But how, exactly, do we get from the competing proposals to actual reform? That's what's brought the debate to its knees.

And how does the nation pay for a health care overhaul? Obama's proposal summarizes how his plan - and others - would do so.

And that's what makes the document a mostly accessible, de facto primer on the health care debate thus far. Most of the document is in plain English, though there are sections that sink into techno-jargon, such as: "extrapolate the error rate found in risk adjustment data validation . . . "

Speed read past those - but keep reading. Because Obama has created 11 pages of one-stop shopping for many of the competing proposals being batted around in Washington.

Obama has asked Congress to vote on his own proposal, as it stands, up or down.

In his dreams.

Instead, there will - and should - be more debate in Congress on what would work best. And there likely will be more arguing as well.

But health care reform is for the rest of us, too. It's too important to ignore, no matter how complex or confusing the debate has been.

A health care reform primer Americans can hold in their hands is a good thing. But only if it successfully fuels a renewed, informed debate that we can follow with our heads.

All the way to health care reform that works.