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.

The American Prospect's Ezra Klein discusses Ruth Marcus' column in the Washington Post on the leading presidential candidates' health plans in which Marcus wrote that "tying insurance to employment makes little sense in a world where workers hop from job to job." Klein responds, "The employer market has terrible problems. The individual market, impressively, is worse."

Michael Cannon on the Cato Institute's Cato@Liberty suggests that "socialized medicine exists to the extent that government controls medical resources and socializes the costs." He adds, "America's health-care sector is already more than half-socialized, and now [Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's (Ill.)] health plan would take us the rest of the way there."

Louise of Colorado Health Insurance Insider discusses Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain's (Ariz.) proposal to provide a refundable tax credit for health insurance and concludes that "while it would be great for my family to start getting a $5,000 tax credit to pay our premiums, it's not a viable solution for a lot of Americans." She adds, "We need a solution that spreads the cost of health care evenly across the entire population."

Merrill Goozner of Gooz News says Obama "raised the bar for the coming health care debate" with his response during Tuesday's presidential debate to the question, "Is health care a right or a responsibility?" Igor Volsky from the Center for American Progress Action Fund's Wonk Room blog calls McCain's answer to the same question "a health care philosophy that ultimately seeks to transfer the risk and costs of insurance onto the individual."

The Health Care Blog's Christopher Weaver discusses a new LexisNexis tool that ranks health care sixth in terms of topics receiving the most media attention. Weaver notes this is a lower ranking than voters have given it as a priority in public opinion polls.

Bob Laszewski on Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review notes the refusal of both presidential nominees to name policy proposals they would postpone given the current economic environment and asks, "What's the real health care strategy that each of them have in the face of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression?"

Health Populi's Jane Sarasohn-Kahn writes that data from the Employee Benefits Research Institute's Health Confidence Survey show a "direct relationship between health care costs and a consumer's use of the system."

Managed Care Matters' Joe Paduda predicts what health initiatives might emerge over the next two years if Obama is elected in November.

Ramesh Ponnuru on the National Review Online's The Corner discusses mandated benefits and asks, "If people value these benefits as much as they're worth, wouldn't insurers competing for business offer them?"

Len Nichols on the New America Foundation's New Health Dialogue discusses McCain's proposal to let people buy insurance across state lines, saying, "the impact on the insurance market would be devastating for consumers trying to find coverage as well as for insurers who do not relocate to states with the fewest regulations." Julia Eisman on Families USA's Stand Up for Health Care discusses concern in the business community about McCain's proposed changes to the tax treatment of employer-sponsored coverage.

Sarah Needleman from the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog discusses a new study that found about 61% of older workers "are not confident" they will receive Medicare benefits at current levels.