Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Feature Highlights Recent Blog Entries

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While mainstream news insurance coverage is static a elemental source of information for the latest in insurance policy debates and the health care market, online blogs have become a pregnant part of the media landscape, often presenting new perspectives on policy issues and drawing attention to under-reported topics. To put up 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 wellness policy-related web log 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 volition stifle medical innovation because it testament "force the price low-toned 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 expenditure 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 boob tube advertising safari 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 charge system, locution, "Obama's design guarantees health care will eventually become a government-run industry."

The Health Affairs web log 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 political sympathies is "nigh interest groups struggling against other groups and eventually 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 a la mode Kaiser Family Foundation Election Tracking Poll, saying that "we should read the KFF trailing poll very clearly: it's costs, prices, affordability. Whatever synonym you choose, it is still the saving that colors the voters' moods."

Insure Blog's H G Stern notes an additional benefit to new infirmary quality information released by CMS: the data "[speck] problem areas, [so] hospitals can address problems that they crataegus laevigata not own been mindful of."

Jonathan Cohn in the New Republic's The Plank discusses attenuation attention to health fear as an election issue, writing that Obama's campaign "is suffering from a lack of imagination ... or a lack of nerve" 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 iI dozen health policy, base, insurance, engineering and managed care bloggers. A different participant's web log hosts each issue.


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