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 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.

Insure Blog 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.

Thomas Miller on the Health Affairs Blog discusses a new paper that estimates the cost of covering the uninsured (here), saying that "some of the authors' assumptions and methods can be questioned," but they had to "maneuver through difficult statistical terrain" and "we know more than we did before." Based on the paper, Miller concludes that "there's just not much of a residual of implicitly subsidized health costs to be potentially picked up by shifting those costs to private payers of higher premiums."

Maggie Mahar of the Century Foundation's Health Beat Blog examines the consequences that an insufficient primary care system has on access to health services.

The Health Business Blog's David Williams argues that new mandatory minimum medical loss ratio legislation in California "won't achieve its goals."

The Health Care Blog's Joshua Seidman critiques state-managed consumer health sites for failing to use a patient-centered approach to design, saying such sites should "meet consumers' needs rather than try to convince consumers about what they should care about with respect to management of their health."

The Healthcare Economist's Jason Shafrin writes that although providing health insurance to uninsured children would increase the amount of care they receive, it will "likely not" equalize the number of well-child visits between insured and uninsured children because of demographic differences -- including income and education levels -- between the two groups.

Healthcare Manumission's John Joseph Leppard IV writes that Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's (Ill.) health plan "offers us no substantial departure, in theme, from the status quo ... but rather places his faith in the same tired themes of government expansion and influence."

Health Populi's Jane Sarasohn-Kahn discusses a study (here) from the Center for Studying Health System Change on hospital and physician price and quality transparency and concludes that "we're not 'there' yet" in part because current information isn't available to the public or "useful to them."

Paul Testa of the New America Foundation's New Health Dialogue discusses the Republican platform on health care and notes that while platforms are vague indications of legislation a candidate might propose, they give voters a glimpse of a party's "vision" for a policy issue.

Robert Gordon and James Kvaal on The New Republic's The Plank critique a Wall Street Journal opinion piece praising Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain's (Ariz.) tax proposals related to health care, arguing that they provide "no benefit" to middle-class Americans because the tax credit for health insurance "won't keep up with rising premiums over time" and because "for every dollar in tax cuts, there must be another dollar in tax increases."

John Geyman on Physicians for a National Health Program Blog discusses new health reform coalitions and their proposals, saying, the groups are "committed to preserving the private health insurance industry, and keeping single-payer national health insurance off the table."

Several bloggers commented on the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) to be McCain's vice presidential candidate and her views on health:

• Cato@Liberty's Michael Tanner writes that "Palin's record should be considered limited but encouraging."
  
  
• Igor Volsky of the Center for American Progress Action Fund's Wonk Room discusses a council established by Palin that "promoted" consumer-driven health care.
  
  
• Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review's Bob Laszewski says Palin's "minor forays into health care policy could hardly be described as heavyweight attempts at health care reform. But both are consistent with the McCain market-based strategy to remake America's health care system."
  
  
• Joe Paduda of Managed Care Matters notes that health care in Alaska is among the most expensive in the nation and that the Commonwealth Fund ranked the state's children's health care in the bottom quartile.
  
  
• Jacob Goldstein of the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog reports that Palin proposed repealing Alaska's certificate-of-need program, which enables the state to regulate the construction of new health facilities.