{"id":518222,"date":"2010-04-06T17:12:19","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T21:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=42671"},"modified":"2010-04-06T17:12:19","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T21:12:19","slug":"understanding-health-care-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/518222","title":{"rendered":"Understanding health care reform"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is the media\u2019s role in covering health care reform properly? A panel at the Harvard Kennedy School<\/a> (HKS) suggested that, even though Congress finally has passed overhaul legislation, there is a continuing need to cut through political spin to explain to the public how the new system will work.<\/p>\n

\u201cCovering Health Care Reform in the Digital Age,\u201d an April 5 discussion co-sponsored by the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy<\/a>, featured perspectives from Robert Blendon<\/a>, professor of health policy and political analysis at HKS and the Harvard School of Public Health<\/a>; Timothy\u00a0Johnson<\/a>, physician and medical editor at ABC News<\/a>; Ezra Klein<\/a>, blogger on economic and domestic policy for Washingtonpost.com<\/a> and columnist for Newsweek<\/a> magazine; and Julie\u00a0Rovner<\/a>, health policy correspondent for National Public Radio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Blendon emphasized the importance of the media in the health care debate, and said that journalism is \u201ccrucial to the nation\u2019s understanding how this policy works.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rovner agreed that although the \u201chorse race is over\u201d and the health care bill has been passed, there is still an \u201cinterim step\u201d before implementation, which is to \u201cexplain to the confused public what\u2019s in the law and how they might be affected by it.\u201d She explained that in reporting on the health care debate, there was a \u201cstruggle to put policy above politics.\u201d Johnson agreed that the policy vs. politics debate was difficult, and while ABC News had chosen to focus on the political aspect of the story, he believed the focus should have been on policy.<\/p>\n

The \u201cbad news,\u201d Klein said, is that \u201cthe media is terrible at doing what it needs to do,\u201d but the good news is that \u201cit doesn\u2019t really matter.\u201d He saw the political structure that existed prior to the bill\u2019s passage as having the greatest influence on its success, and he expressed skepticism about how large a role health reform will play in the mid-term elections.<\/p>\n

But Blendon said the wide political gaps between the parties will force health care to remain the key election issue.<\/p>\n

To illustrate the complications of the health care bill, Klein said he has \u201cmade charts and graphs \u2014 we\u2019ve made so many<\/em> graphs,\u201d yet the public still seems vastly unaware of the bill\u2019s complexities.<\/p>\n

While new media technology provides \u201cmore resources than ever\u201d for citizens to get information about health care legislation, politics, rather than education, still drives the debate. Johnson said he was appalled at the lack of knowledge among intelligent citizens on aspects of the reform legislation. Rovner cited an example of a colleague reporting on a Tea Party protest meeting who called her to verify what turned out to be wildly inaccurate rumors being passed around as truth.<\/p>\n

Johnson said he sees \u201cbattles yet to come\u201d that will deal with the unavoidable issue of controlling costs. \u201cBut no one wants to talk about that aspect of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The event was co-sponsored by the Health Policy Professional Interest Council<\/a> and the Communications & Media Professional Interest Council as part of the Kennedy School\u2019s Public Service Week<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is the media\u2019s role in covering health care reform properly? A panel at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) suggested that, even though Congress finally has passed overhaul legislation, there is a continuing need to cut through political spin to explain to the public how the new system will work. \u201cCovering Health Care Reform in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}