Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Health reform is hard to explain

I was at a dinner last night and I tried to explain the concept of "global payments" to my hosts. And I couldn't, or at least not very well, even though I cover and blog on health. As Julie Rovner of NPR says in this story, the health care system has a lot of moving parts. Often, you need to understand one piece before you can understand another.

So, check out this item from the Association of Health Care Journalists on how hard it can be to cover health reform. (I love AHCJ because they get it.)

John Harwood, chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and a political writer for The New York Times, expressed some of the frustration of reporting on health care reform, saying “It’s not only not a cable TV-friendly story; it’s not a journalism-friendly story.”

I would suggest that the only thing harder than explaining health reform would be trying to sell a story on health reform.

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