Top Stories on Health Care

With our new site in full swing, last week we turned to Health Care as our featured topic. Our main focus: the presidential cadidates' positions on health care.

Barack Obama and John McCain have proposed starkly different plans on how to provide health care for the country's millions of uninsured. Obama has called for a new national health care plan for the uninsured, universal health care for children and regulation of private health insurance. McCain has proposed refundable tax credits for individuals and families for private health insurance, and has suggested that insurers be allowed to sell across state lines to provide more private insurance options.

In our news hunt, we sought out journalism that explained the politics and realities of their proposals, and how they would affect citizens when put into practice. Under the leadership of our hosts, Kristin Gorski and Patricia Blochowiak, we found and rated great news and opinion on this topic, and on the more general state of U.S. health care. Here's a sampling:

Critical Condition
P.O.V., PBS (Special Report)

Health care: a campaign primer
Chronicle of Higher Education (News Analysis)

Health care advisors show plan diversity
The Politico (News Report)

FactChecking debate No. 2
FactCheck (News Analysis)

Obama v. McCain: "Fundamental difference" on health care
The Nation (News Analysis)

Many doubt that McCain's health plan would help uninsured
McClatchy (News Report)

The real risk of McCain's health care plan
National Journal (Opinion)

Health care destruction
New York Times (Opinion)

Palin on health care
Anchorage Daily News (Editorial)

Task force recommends changes to state's involuntary commitment laws
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (News Report)

Experts conclude Pfizer manipulated studies
New York Times (News Report)

Costly ER still draws many now insured
Boston Globe (News Report)

Examining America's presidential candidates
Economist (Special Report)

Health insurance from an employer's viewpoint
Neiman Watchdog (News Analysis)

Our hosts
We'd like to give a special thanks to our Health Care hosts, Kristin and Patricia. Kristin is a freelance writer and blogger for Huffington Post's Off the Bus, and Patricia is a family physician and community activist. Together, they led the way in helping us separate rhetoric from reality in the health care debate, carefully reviewing and submitting stories and offering us great analysis on the issue.

At the end of our news hunt, we asked them what conclusions they drew from the candidates' public statements about their plans and the media's coverage of U.S. health care.

Kristin reflected on the inconsistency of health care coverage among various sources:

Different mainstream media outlets frame health care stories in various ways. Some have dedicated "health" sections and write regularly on these issues. A few tuck occasional health-related stories under the lighter fare of "lifestyle" or "living" sections, while others place breaking health news under the serious "science" section. This made me look at the outlets' readership, geographical location, advertisers and parent companies to better understand how they presented stories to their readers.

She added that after a week of immersion, some of her personal perceptions of the U.S. health care system had changed, particularly with respect to the country's more than 45 million uninsured:

Before this news hunt, I did not fully understand that so many uninsured are the working poor. Now, I've read time and again how their paths to sickness replay millions of times ... There is almost a formula to the failure of lives due to lack of health insurance. If these steps are so consistent, why are the solutions touted as so complex? After reading so many stories on this, I'm convinced that there is only one solution to fix all of the above: universal health insurance coverage.

Thanks again, Kristin and Patricia, for your hard work and valuable input that made this news hunt a success.

This week: Immigration
Our featured topic this week is Immigration, in partnership with New America Media, a leading aggregator of ethnic news. In the wake of the financial crisis, the complex issues of immigration, national security and race in America are likely to become more important, yet both U.S. presidential candidates have avoided them. We're looking for journalism that explains these issues, and how the candidates would address them as president. Get started by reviewing stories on our Immigration topic page, or submitting great news and opinion on immigration.

Comments

[Pat Blochowiak]

Coverage of health and health care, as all coverage of science, is extremely uneven, with all too many journalists lacking a basic understanding of the principals defining good research, as well as lacking a basic understanding of the workings of the human body and mind. There is often a lack of understanding that having health insurance is not equivalent to having access to health care. Note here the experience of Massachusetts, where the proportion of the insured has increased dramatically, but access to health care is still lacking for many who are unable to find a primary care physician with an open practice, or who wait months for their first appointment.

Newstrust, which is very impressive in its reviews of many topics, demonstrates an unevenness of reviews that is comparable to the extreme variability of journalism.

All this points to the need to improve science education. A true understanding of the scientific method, added to an improved understanding of the workings of the human body and the human mind, should lead to improved journalism and improved reviews in the area of health and health care.

My experience on Newstrust last week was also colored by difficulties in posting stories, including a frustrating difficulty in finding two of the stories I posted: the troubling story on McCain's melanoma and an interesting analysis of the difficulties in training and keeping sufficient numbers of primary care physicians. Even though the melanoma story was posted within a week, it did not appear when I searched the Health articles, specifying that I wanted all stories within a week, or even within a month. And no amount of questioning the Newstrust powers-that-be ever changed the situation, which I found extremely frustrating.

All in all, it was an interesting week.

[Pat Blochowiak]

P.S. Why is the story "Examining America's presidential candidates" listed as a health care story, when it discusses economists' favorable reactions to Obama's economic plans as compared to McCain's?

[uwak]

thanks for great topic....... great linking, I am very enjoy