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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Healthcare

1. July 11, 2012 11:01 AM

   The Palm Beach Post exposes a hidden menace

   Government cutbacks and the worst TB epidemic in 20 years

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Reporting on tuberculosis is not most reporters’ idea of a glamor assignment. It’s an ancient disease, drug companies aren’t keen to develop blockbuster medicines, and, anyway, few people get it, right? Wrong. A powerful expose by Stacey Singer, the health reporter for The Palm Beach Post, has revealed a serious outbreak of TB in Jacksonville—the worst the Centers for Disease...

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2. February 25, 2011 11:02 AM

   “Tweaking” Health Reform

   Who pays the price for the changes?

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Lost in MSM coverage of the president’s budget and hype over a government shutdown has been reportage about the various “tweaks” to the health reform law. Kudos to Merrill Goozner of the Fiscal Times, Megan McArdle at The Atlantic, and Timothy Jost writing for Kaiser Health News, for their enlightening commentaries. Who will pay the price for these changes? Why,...

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3. April 17, 2012 04:09 PM

   EXTRA Unpacks the Media’s Medicare Coverage

   Are journalists writing for doctors or for patients?

   By Trudy Lieberman

   I don’t know Amy Poe, a writer and Medicare consumer based in Little Rock, Arkansas. But I like a piece she wrote for EXTRA, a monthly magazine of commentary and criticism of the press. I suspect most Beltway reporters and those who toil in smaller circles don’t know much about FAIR, a progressive media watchdog group that publishes EXTRA. But...

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4. June 27, 2011 05:13 PM

   Globe Delivers its Verdict on Romneycare

   A good—if imperfect—example of policy-oriented reporting

   By Greg Marx

   On Sunday, the Boston Globe published the second installment in its two-part series on “Romneycare,” the Massachusetts health care overhaul passed in 2006. Though not as buzz-worthy as the first part of the series — which tracked the back-room negotiations in which then-governor Mitt Romney came to support the program, and particularly the controversial individual mandate — the article offers...

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5. March 9, 2011 04:30 PM

   Las Vegas Sun Shines Light on Nevada Health Care

   Multimedia investigation of hospital injuries wins 2011 Goldsmith Prize

   By Cristine Russell

   CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—“Where do you go for great health care in Las Vegas?” Answer: “The airport.” That local joke set Las Vegas Sun reporters Marshall Allen and Alex Richards on a two-year quest to figure out what was wrong with medical treatment in Las Vegas—and why. The result, after a digital dig into 2.9 million inpatient hospital records and more than...

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6. April 4, 2011 12:29 PM

   A Missing Health Policy Story

   A “study says” piece gets short shrift

   By Trudy Lieberman

   The most underreported health story of this past week was, in my view, one that came out of the RAND Corp., the Santa Monica think tank known for its thorough, leading edge research on health policy. Before the words “health policy” throw you into a snooze, dear reader, let’s look at what the study showed and its implications for how...

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7. March 29, 2011 04:23 PM

   A New Entry in the Health Care Lexicon

   Beware of “centralized medical planning”

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Lawrence Hunter, a contributor on Forbes.com, took on President Obama the other day, listing a number of White House initiatives that he apparently doesn’t like. The post is predictable, given Hunter’s pedigree—he once worked for conservative former New York congressman Jack Kemp, was an advisor in the Reagan administration, and is a former vice president and chief economist for the...

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8. July 20, 2011 02:32 PM

   A Shout Out to The Palm Beach Post

   A rare glimpse into the ways of for-profit health care

   By Trudy Lieberman

   The Palm Beach Post deserves kudos for exposing how Florida governor Rick Scott conducted the business of his urgent care clinics in the state, and what his actions reveal for health care to come. Scott is something of health care’s bad boy, having gotten into trouble running Columbia/ HCA, the giant for-profit hospital chain owned by the Frist family of...

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9. June 7, 2011 12:41 AM

   Audit Notes: Sun-Times Daley Probe, CanadaCare Myths, Off the News

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Chicago Sun-Times has a dandy investigation today reporting that the son of former Mayor Richard Daley made skads of money when the city signed a deal for wifi service in the city's airports. To make matters worse, the Daley administration denied for years that Patrick Daley had any financial stake in the deal. Unfortunately for them, the Sun-Times's Tim...

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10. April 21, 2011 12:03 AM

    Audit Notes: Financial Fraud and the Economy, TBTF Debts, Health Care

    By Ryan Chittum

    Mike Konczal has some good thoughts on the Levin-Coburn Report, financial fraud, and ProPublica's Pulitzer win for their Wall Street reporting: Why is fraud important? The first is obviously the ideal of justice, that those who have been rewarded at another’s expense ought to pay a price. The second is a regulatory issue, to provide disincentives against wrong acts. The...

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11. March 6, 2012 12:58 AM

    Audit Notes: Rocket Internet, Gas Taxes, The Price of Health Care

    By Ryan Chittum

    Bloomberg BusinessWeek has a good story on a German company that makes its living ripping off American websites and taking them overseas before the Americans can get there. Rocket Internet, owned by three German brothers, has copied eBay, Zappos.com, Groupon, and Facebook, and more—sometimes down to the font and the style of furniture displayed on the homepage. The proprietors are...

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12. October 3, 2011 12:38 PM

    Bad Omens for Health Care

    Mixed coverage of the latest premium hikes

    By Trudy Lieberman

    The big news in health care last week was, of course, that average annual premiums for family coverage through employers reached an all-time high of $15,037, a nine percent increase from last year. While the major media outlets were scrambling to make sense out of such a steep rise, I was walking the streets of Lincoln, Nebraska, hearing from people...

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13. March 24, 2011 01:00 PM

    CJR Holds a Town Hall at NYU

    Students know little about the health law

    By Trudy Lieberman

    It is birthday week for the Affordable Care Act, the official name of the health reform law passed a year ago. Previous CJR town halls have suggested that ordinary people, millions of whom are supposed to be helped by the Act, know little or nothing about it. But what about young adults who will benefit from one of the Act’s...

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14. October 5, 2011 12:49 PM

    CJR Holds a Town Hall in Nebraska

    Obama’s disconnect with the voters

    By Trudy Lieberman

    In a recent column for The Washington Post, Richard Cohen recounted how FDR cried when he learned that children living in migrant worker camps had no toys for Christmas. “Don’t tell me any more, Helen,” he said to Helen Gahagan Douglas—who, political junkies will remember, later lost a nasty Senate race to Richard Nixon. Roosevelt, the patrician, could connect to...

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15. July 3, 2012 03:03 PM

    Climbing the Medicaid mountain

    The press is starting to master the policy angles. Now for the people

    By Trudy Lieberman

    The Affordable Care Act envisions a major expansion of health insurance in America, with some 30 million Americans gaining coverage. That figure includes some 17 million people with low incomes who were to get health insurance via an expansion of Medicaid eligibility. With eligibility raised—from 100 percent of the poverty level to 133 percent—many states will enlarge their Medicaid rolls...

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16. November 15, 2011 04:59 PM

    Confused NYT Coverage of Obama Health Care Law’s Prospects

    By Ryan Chittum

    The New York Times can't make up its mind on what a Supreme Court ruling against Obama health care plan's individual mandate would mean for the overall health-care law. On page one today, it reports this: Whatever Court Rules, Major Changes in Health Care Likely to Last On the website today, a news analysis , presumably going in tomorrow's paper,...

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17. September 14, 2011 12:01 PM

    Deep Health Care Problems under Rick Perry’s Watch

    Deep in the heart of Texas

    By Trudy Lieberman

    With the media hyper-focused on Texas governor Rick Perry’s not-too-flattering comments about Social Security, health care in his state seems like a woeful orphan in Medialand. That’s why Noam Levey deserves a shout-out for his recent Los Angeles Times story dissecting what’s really happening in Texas when it comes to caring for the sick. Levey presents a devastating account of...

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18. March 15, 2011 02:56 PM

    Disaster in Japan

    And thoughts on its national health system

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Images of the devastation in northeastern Japan reminded me of the time I rode the Shinkansen—the bullet train that raced through Sendai, now torn by the earthquake, and on to the city of Morioka, where I was to learn how the country cared for its older citizens. I was a Fulbright Scholar studying why the Japanese health care system was...

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19. March 18, 2011 11:31 AM

    Excluded Voices: Health Care Costs

    An interview with Dr. Robert Berenson of the Urban Institute

    By Trudy Lieberman

    During the health reform debate, we periodically presented Q and A interviews with health care experts whose voices were scarce. Too often journalists sought out the same organizations and the same expert sources for their stories, offering up what became the conventional wisdom on different aspects of reform. To bring more variety into the conversation, our Excluded Voices series featured...

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20. January 18, 2011 12:26 PM

    Health Care Red Meat from Politico

    Business writers, take note

    By Trudy Lieberman

    One of the most illuminating health care stories to come along in the last couple weeks was Politico’s take on the J.P. Morgan Health Care Conference in San Francisco. Politico’s story sang with information. The insurance industry is going to make a killing on health reform. But, then again, we’ve known that ever since the public option was eliminated. The...

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