Why are so many of the most pressing subjects in national politics also the most tedious? Social Security reform is certainly right up there. H. L. Mencken himself would have a hard time making an interesting story out of payroll tax caps and trust-fund solvency projections. What else? Poverty programs for Africa. Comprehensive energy independence plans. The looming current-account deficit with China.

And, of course, health care policy in all its detailed glory. Capitation rates. Health savings accounts. Single payer versus multipayer plans. Cost containment. Privacy issues. The uninsured. FDA testing reform. COBRA and HIPAA. The ghost of Hillarycare.

If you’re starting to nod off already, you’re not alone. Even more than in most policy areas, health care is one where the details matter a lot, but those details are almost mind-numbingly boring. This makes it a tough nut to crack for most journalists.

Jonathan Cohn, a senior editor at The New Republic, was obviously well aware of this problem when he decided to write Sick, an exploration of the history and operation of the U.S. health care system. How do you make the story of the origins of Blue Cross come alive? How do you decipher the intricacies of SCHIP and Medicaid? How do you describe the difference between experience rating and community rating without lapsing into incomprehensible wonk-speak? Or explain our continued attachment to linking health care to employment? Cohn’s solution is simple: he decided to treat his subject as an exercise in narrative journalism.

This is hardly a surprising decision since narrative has become a staple of contemporary reporting. What makes it unusual here is its scope. Rather than using the narrative formula to highlight a specific health care problem—as, for example, The New York Times did in early 2006 in its monster four-part, twenty-thousand-word series about...

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