How to cover health-care reform locally

Photo by Flickr.com user Doug McIntosh

• Stay on top of proposed health-insurance rate increases. Insurers’ filings with state regulators are public record. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners can point you to the office in your state. Seek comment from consumers, employers, consumer groups and politicians. Before the filings, identify the insurers with the biggest market share and have a chart of increases for the past five years ready to run.
• Talk to business groups and employers about how they’re preparing for the new law. Look for changes in the type of policies being offered, shifts in the share of premiums paid by workers and any increased emphasis on prevention. Insurance brokers and benefits companies such as Mercer and Hewitt can assist.
• Insurers and hospitals are at war over prices, with each getting bigger to get more bargaining clout. “Mergers are more about money than patient care,” his tip sheet says. Sources include IRS Form 990s for nonprofits on GuideStar.org and bond prospectuses filed when hospitals borrow to finance construction, available on the EMMA database of municipal bonds.
• Check every bill introduced in your state legislature that changes the role of hospital, doctors, insurers or others in the health-care system, such as nurse practitioners. “Lobbyists are often the best source of information about competitors’ bills,” he says. “Are campaign contributions greasing the skids?”

And here are helpful websites he identified:

• Alliance for Health Reform puts out a source book for journalists.
• Association of Health Care Journalists has tips, including ideas on how to cover the July 1 deadline for establishment of temporary pools for the medically uninsurable.
• The Commonwealth Fund, Mathematica Policy Research,  Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Kaiser Family Foundation, which funds the nonprofit Kaiser Health News, offer policy papers and experts.
• Health Affairs journal reports on reform issues.
• Medicare Payment Advisory Commission is an independent congressional agency that issues two major annual reports, as well as others, that often identify ways in which providers are “gaming the system to reap more money.”
• Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care is an “excellent source for identifying over-utilization of medical resources in your area and comparing medical-practice patterns, although there is a lag of between three and five years on the data.”
• National Association of Health Data Organizations is a “very helpful gateway into figuring out what publicly available data your state has on cost and quality at its health-care facilities.”
• Center for Studying Health System Change “is the rare D.C. think tank that does not see the world through political ideologies” and offers some of its own data.
• “Landmark” is The Washington Post’s quickie book on the law and “could be a beat reporter’s best friend.”
• For the states’ take, try the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Governors Association and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.
• Kaiser Health News aggregates news about health and offers the text of the health-reform law. Fairhall, who was a journalist at The Baltimore Sun for 27 years, can be reached at jfairhall@kff.org.