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.  Click title to read more…

The American Prospect‘s Ezra Klein says that as President-elect Barack Obama’s “team is beginning to integrate health care into their economic efforts,” the key health reform players will be the “Senate Democrats, and in particular, Max Baucus and Ted Kennedy.”

Igor Volsky of the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Wonk Room blog says “the marketplace is part of the problem; it has failed to keep costs down and increase access to care,” in response to a Washington Times editorial calling for market-based solutions addressing health care cost and coverage.

Jeff Goldsmith on the Health Affairs Blog discusses HHS-Secretary-nominee Tom Daschle’s book on health reform and how his ideas might impact the course of health reform legislation in the next administration.

Maggie Mahar of the Century Foundation’s Health Beat Blog discusses the challenge of addressing wasteful spending in a health reform proposal, asking, “Which sectors of a $2.3 trillion health care economy should we stimulate to insure that patients receive the safest, most effective care at a price that they can afford?” Mahar also looks at cost increases and a shortage of primary care in Massachusetts, adding, “before rushing blindly forward, we should remember Massachusetts.”

David Kibbe and Brian Klepper on Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review recommend that Obama allocate proposed funding for health information technology to smaller, incremental projects because doing so “would likely impact a larger number of medical practices in the short term, benefiting patients while limiting the disruption to doctors.”

Michael Miller of Health Care Policy and Communications Blog says recent events have “made me appreciate how the policy and political environment for health reform will be very different in 2009,” but the challenge is whether grassroots coalitions will remain “when difficult choices about the specifics of health reform legislation need to be made.”

Health Populi‘s Jane Sarasohn-Kahn looks at a new Wyatt Watson survey of employees’ perspectives on health care, saying the results indicate that “[e]mployees will be making some short-term financial decisions driven by health cost burdens that will worsen both their long-term physical — and fiscal — health.”

Joe Paduda of Managed Care Matters says arguments over treatment efficacy are one reason health reform will be difficult because “medicine is an art as much as a science, and art is, as famously described, in the eye of the beholder.”

Paul Testa of the New America Foundation’s New Health Dialogue reports on an NAF event unveiling a new coalition of Health CEOs for Health Reform.

Don McCanne of Physicians for a National Health Program blog asserts that Obama’s deputy director of the new White House Office of Health Reform, Jeanne Lambrew, “rejects the nonsense about the socialized medicine bogeyman,” and asks why “she and the other Washington veterans continue to begin from a position that single payer is not feasible?”

Sarah Rubenstein of the Wall Street Journal‘s Health Blog looks at a Center for Studying Health System Change report that found 2.3% of families had used a retail clinic.