Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Feature Highlights Recent Blog Entries

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP
Article Date: 10 Nov 2008 - 10:00 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 discusses his interview with Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.), where Baucus signaled his openness to using the budget reconciliation process, which limits debate to 20 hours and requires only a simple majority vote, to avoid the need to get 60 votes in the Senate to pass health reform legislation. Klein calls this "an implicit threat to Republicans" that they must be "constructive" in a debate over health reform.

Jeff Goldsmith on the Health Affairs blog examines three approaches President-elect Barack Obama could take to reform health care in the current economic environment, ranging from laying the groundwork for reform to a "Finish the New Deal" proposal. The Health Business Blog's David Williams says, considering job losses and depleted savings because of the market downturn, "I think it's quite possible that a consensus may emerge from the grassroots level in favor of a single-payer health care system," although he "[doesn't] want to see single-payer." Gooz News' Merrill Goozner writes, "Curbing the growth of health care spending will reassert itself as an issue next year because it is key to restoring this nation to economic competitiveness."

Michael Cannon of Cato@Liberty looks at a recent New York Times article that reported that women pay higher health insurance premiums than men on the individual market and says, "[I]f charging different premiums based on sex is wrong, why only look at health insurance? Men pay higher premiums for life and auto insurance." Cannon adds that "risk-based insurance premiums are an essential tool for containing health care costs" because higher premiums create pressure to be cost-conscious.

Niko Karvounis on the Century Foundation's Health Beat Blog writes that Obama's "National Health Insurance Exchange" gives "single-payers and free-marketeers a health care system close to their cherished principles" by offering a public plan while preserving a choice of private health insurance options.

Judith Graham of the Chicago Tribune's Triage blog points to a study by the Illinois Hospital Association that found Medicare's new non-payment policy for medical errors "will have little, if any, financial impact on hospitals" in part because Medicare still pays for complications resulting from some medical errors and payments will not be reduced for patients with other underlying medical complications.

Bob Laszewski on Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review lists bipartisan health legislation that could be enacted in the near-term, including SCHIP reauthorization, helping small businesses pay for health insurance, changing payments to Medicare Advantage plans and health information technology adoption. Laszewski says if the new president and Congress commit to bipartisanship, they can "break the gridlock on health care and make some modest progress."

Health Populi's Jane Sarasohn-Kahn looks at new programs at retail outlets to lower the price of some prescription drugs. Sarasohn-Kahn notes "a rational economic decision may be an irrational one for health outcomes."

Insure Blog's Henry Stern looks at North Carolina's new state high-risk pool. Stern says, "Of all the plans we've seen so far, this one seems to me closest to dealing in a realistic way with at least the delivery of a reasonable product." However, he expresses concern over the "adverse effect it seems to pose to the commercial market" and concludes that "time will tell" whether the pool is a success.

The conversation continued on the National Journal's Health Care Expert Blog with new responses from Drew Altman, John Goodman, Len Nichols, Marilyn Werber Serafini, Donna Shalala and Rich Umbdenstock about how Tuesday's election has changed the health reform debate.

Paul Testa of the New America Foundation's New Health Dialogue looks at some health ballot initiative outcomes and says, in state health care initiatives "the federal government has had an important part to play."

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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