Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report Feature Highlights Recent Blog Entries

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.

Elizabeth Edwards of the Center for American Progress' Action Fund Wonk Room blog and Jonathan Cohn from The New Republic's The Plank discuss problems with the individual insurance market in reaction to a Los Angeles Times column, which reported that three insurers are charging men and women different rates for individual policies in California.

Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag discusses a new CBO report that estimates savings for S 1695, a bill that would create a regulatory pathway for the approval of generic versions of biotechnology drugs. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) on The Hill's Congress Blog also discusses the report.

Jaan Sidorov from the Disease Management Care Blog hosted 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.

Merrill Goozner of Gooz News and Bob Laszewski of Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review critique a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece about legislation that would reduce funds for Medicare Advantage plans. Conn Carroll from the Heritage Foundation's The Foundry blog also weighs in on MA.

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt completes a series of posts where he examined challenges facing lawmakers addressing fiscal concerns in the Medicare program (here, here and here.) Leavitt will submit the posts as minutes to the annual spring Medicare Trustee's meeting.

Maggie Mahar from the Health Beat Blog discusses why she thinks progressives should spend more time talking about ways to slow the growth of health care costs.

Brian Rosman from Health Care For All's A Healthy Blog posts a debate from the blog's comment section between Paul Levy, president of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Charlie Baker, CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, about a plan in Massachusetts to publicly post hospital cost data.

Health Populi's Jane Sarasohn-Kahn discusses results from a Deloitte survey that finds three out of four patients would like to customize their health plan by choosing benefits.

Joanne Kenen from The New America Foundation's New Health Dialogue writes that price transparency is valuable but says that without comparative effectiveness data, health information technology and reimbursement changes, "we're just looking at one apple when we need to be checking the whole bushel."

Supraspinatus discusses results of an American Medical Association survey that found few patients use online rating sites to choose their physicians. Supraspinatus says that although a small percentage of patients currently use these services, the growth in use is so fast that "we will get to one-third [of patients using rating sites] long before 2010."

NewTalk hosts an online forum with health policy experts on chronic disease and health care reform.

Joe Paduda from Managed Care Matters makes predictions about possible health legislation if Democrats make gains in the 2008 election.

Theo Francis from the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog reports on a new service from Data Advantage that assigns different weights to measures of quality, affordability, efficiency and patient satisfaction to make a Hospital Value Index.