Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Feature Highlights Recent Blog Entries

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 25 Aug 2008 - 12:00 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 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 responds to a post by The Atlantic's Megan McArdle in which she argues that Massachusetts health reform will stifle medical innovation because it will "force the price low enough that middle-income families will be willing to pay it"; Klein counters with a discussion about the extent to which the Massachusetts plan is aiming to cut costs and whether "cutting spending inevitably cuts innovation."

Igor Volsky of the Center for American Progress Action Fund's Wonk Room, Louise from Colorado Health Insurance Insider, The Health Care Blog's Brian Klepper and Don McCanne from the Physicians for a National Health Program Blog discuss a new multimillion-dollar national television advertising campaign that features "Harry and Louise" advocating for health reform.

Conn Caroll of the Heritage Foundation's The Foundry discusses presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's (Ill.) recent statements on a single-payer health care system, saying, "Obama's plan guarantees health care will eventually become a government-run industry."

The Health Affairs blog includes commentaries by Nancy Davenport-Enni, Esther Dyson and Mark Leavitt as part of a series of posts on health information technology.

Maggie Mahar from the Century Foundation's Health Beat Blog responds to a piece in the New Yorker that argues politics is "about interest groups struggling against other groups and finally making deals" and that "the public interest" is a "useless concept"; she examines the argument's failings when applied to health reform.

Jane Sarasohn-Kahn of Health Populi discusses results from the latest Kaiser Family Foundation Election Tracking Poll, saying that "we should read the KFF tracking poll very clearly: it's costs, prices, affordability. Whatever synonym you choose, it is still the economy that colors the voters' moods."

Insure Blog's H G Stern notes an additional benefit to new hospital quality information released by CMS: the data "[pinpoint] problem areas, [so] hospitals can address problems that they may not have been aware of."

Jonathan Cohn in the New Republic's The Plank discusses fading attention to health care as an election issue, writing that Obama's campaign "is suffering from a lack of imagination ... or a lack of mettle" but that there is still time for the campaign to "elevate" the issue.

Workers' Comp Insider's Julie Ferguson hosts the most recent 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.

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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