Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report feature highlights recent blogs

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.

Action for Better Health Care discusses an article on MSN Money about Wal-Mart's business practices and ways to apply them to health care reform, saying that "the bottom line is that we can learn from Wal-Mart's actions over the past year."

The American Prospect's Ezra Klein -- responding to a post by Matthew Yglesias on the lack of a relationship between Medicare spending and health care quality -- points out that a dearth of comparative effectiveness research hampers the potential savings from changing physician reimbursement to discourage over-treatment.

Trudy Lieberman of Columbia Journalism Review's Campaign Desk Blog discusses mainstream press coverage of presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama's (Ill.) recent speech on health care, saying reporters should put more effort into reporting the "facts behind the words that the candidates most certainly will throw out."

The Center for American Progress Action Fund's Progress Report discusses presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain's (Ariz.) health care plan, saying "broad outlines of his proposal represent a 'radical' departure from the current employer-based system."

Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag responds to a letter from RAND addressing differences between the two organizations' findings on savings from increased use of health information technology.

Anthony Wright from Health Access Weblog discusses two recent articles by Ron Brownstein that illustrate the debate over whether health reform efforts should rely on the group market or individual market, adding that there is a "clear" distinction between the presidential candidates' plans on this question.

A post on health reform efforts in Indiana topped the Health Affairs Blog's list of the most popular posts from April and May.

Niko Kourvanis of Health Beat Blog examines funding changes and conflicts over two government-funded health IT systems, the Department of Veterans Affairs' Vista and the Department of Defense's AHLTA.

The Health Business Blog's David Williams suggests that entrepreneurs and the private industry "are underappreciated assets in the health reform debate" and lists some companies he believes are "poised to make a big difference."

Sarah Arnquist from the Health Care Blog discusses the constraints of newsrooms, ways health writers and editors could improve and the changing media landscape in reaction to a study in PLoS Medicine that found health journalists often fail to fully discuss several issues when reporting health news.

H.G. Stern of InsureBlog lists unique challenges for insurers selling health policies online directly to consumers in response to news that an insurance carrier has abandoned a recent online effort and is switching back to using agents.

Managed Care Matters' Joe Paduda blogs that he continues to believe chances are good for the next Congress to pass a health reform bill, adding that he believes 60 senators could vote for a plan.

The New America Foundation's New Health Dialog's Paul Testa reports on an event sponsored by the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease about chronic disease and health care reform, noting that addressing chronic disease is key "because that's where the money is." A webcast of the forum is available online at health08.org.