While older Americans worry about the pulse of Medicare, liberal Democrats worry that President Obama has grown squishy on health care reform.

In Congress, House and Senate Democrats don't yet see eye-to-eye, and on the tube people yell about killing grandma in the name of efficiency and about falling prey to insurance company sharks.

Tired of the screaming?

Ready for facts instead of myths about health care?

Here's a consumer's guide to clarity on the political season's hottest topic. And don't worry about arriving late to the party; there's still a lot of politicking, and misinformation, to come.

• Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning project of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times. Online: politifact.com.

Ready for some fun as you stay informed? Politifact features articles on health care reform, but the grabber is its "Truth-O-Meter," which researches and rates assertions by politicians, interest groups and everyone else in the health reform-o-sphere.

Ratings range from "true" to "false," with steps in-between, down to rare cases of "pants on fire."

A separate "Obamameter" tracks the president's promises on a variety of topics.

• Fact.Check.org, from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Online: factcheck.org.

Fact.Check similarly scrutinizes health care statements by industry groups, TV ads and politicians of all stripes. You can e-mail your own question on health reform and other issues to Fact.Check, where your question and the answer will be posted.

• Kaiser Family Foundation, of Menlo Park. Calif. Online: kff.org.

The private foundation issues reports on a variety of health topics. Of particular interest, once Congress returns to action in Washington, D.C., is Kaiser's side-by-side comparison of health care reform proposals. You can compare some or all of the various proposals (12 at last count) in their entirety, or as they address particular health care topics.

• The Commonwealth Fund, of New York City. Online: commonwealthfund.org.

Less flashy than Politifact and Fact.Check, Commonwealth offers a slew of deeper articles, surveys and reports on such topics as health insurance, Medicare and health care quality. For policy wonks and others digging deeply into the subject.

• Congressional Budget Office. Online: cbo.gov/publications/collections/health.cfm.

If you're up for the Commonwealth Fund, you can handle the Congressional Budget Office, which generates much-publicized studies on the dollar impacts of pending legislation, including health care proposals.

• Legislative database for the Library of Congress. Online: www.thomas.gov.

What good is worrying about legislation if you can't read it and track it? Through the Library of Congress, you can bone up on health care legislation, from summaries to the entire bill. There's also information on cost estimates, and where legislation is sitting in the congressional sausage-maker.