Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Feature Highlights Recent Blog Entries

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: Public Health;  IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 16 Jun 2008 - 8:00 PDT

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While mainstream news coverage is still a primary source of information for the latest in policy debates and the health care marketplace, online blogs have become a significant part of the media landscape, often presenting new perspectives on policy issues and drawing attention to under-reported topics. To provide complete coverage of health policy issues, the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report offers readers a window into the world of blogs in a new roundup of health policy-related blog posts. "Blog Watch," published on Tuesdays and Fridays, tracks a wide range of blogs, providing a brief description and relevant links for highlighted posts.

The American Prospect's Ezra Klein discusses the challenges that special interests would pose to a comparative effectiveness review board, saying that "the question is whether spending is so high, and the pressure is so great, that a new comparative effectiveness board will have powerful political defenders who will protect its mission and beat back those who would dismantle it out of self-interest."

Louise Norris of Colorado Health Insurance Insider, notes agreement with Aetna's CEO Ronald Williams that health care costs are a large part of health insurance premium increases but asks, "Are [health insurers] really trying to lower their expenses, or is it just easier to raise premiums and carry on doing business as usual?"

The Health Business Blog's David Williams discusses news that concerns over health insurance are affecting flexibility in the U.S. labor market, saying that "guaranteed issue and community rating can actually encourage entrepreneurial activities by putting big companies, small companies and individuals on a roughly equal footing ... the downside is that such policies are often accompanied by a paternalistic element -- namely lots of mandates -- that drive costs up."

Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review's Bob Laszewski offers analysis of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain's (Ariz.) and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's (Ill.) health care proposals. Joe Paduda of Managed Care Matters calls differences between the two candidates' plans "big -- really big."

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt uses a whitewater rafting analogy in two posts (here and here) to illustrate challenges facing lawmakers addressing fiscal concerns in the Medicare program. Leavitt will submit the posts as minutes to the annual spring Medicare Trustee's meeting.

Health Access Weblog's Anthony Wright discusses proposed budget cuts to Medi-Cal and Healthy Families programs -- California's Medicaid and SCHIP programs, respectively -- saying that "the greatest threat to health reform in 2009 may not be the insurance industry or even voter distrust ... but the budget crisis and the state governors and legislators who are making these health care budget cuts around the nation and are undermining the foundation on which we need to build."

The Health Affairs Blog hosts the newest edition of Health Wonk Review, a biweekly compendium of more than two dozen health policy, infrastructure, insurance, technology and managed care bloggers. A different participant's blog hosts each issue.

Matthew Holt from the Health Care Blog discusses a panel on the government's role in health information technology with Democratic and Republican congressional staffers, who appeared "confident that bipartisan legislation will pass encouraging Health IT via Medicare and other programs in the next Congress."

Health Populi's Jane Sarasohn-Kahn discusses a survey from the National Federation of Independent Business that finds small-business owners name health care costs as their top problem, and have listed it as No. 1 since the first survey in 1982.

A guest poster for InsureBlog writes two posts (here and here) about the Cover Florida Health Care Access Program, new legislation aimed at reducing the number of uninsured residents.

Paul Testa from the New America Foundation's New Health Dialogue reports on testimony from the Senate Finance Committee hearing, "47 Million & Counting: Why the Health Care Marketplace is Broken." Barbara Martinez from the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog reports Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) at the hearing signaled tax breaks for not-for-profit hospitals might be in jeopardy, saying, "As we talk about the tax incentives for health insurance, I want us to also consider the billions of dollars of tax benefits conferred to nonprofit hospitals."

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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