Healthier debate over health care reform begins to plays out

Is it time for Arthur Alpert to apologize to the Albuquerque Journal?

Maybe. Maybe not.

It’s really just a rhetorical question, but as many NMI readers know, Alpert has been very critical of the coverage the state’s largest newspaper has been devoting to the wonky, weighty topic of health care reform.

Alpert’s view in brief: the Journal has been shirking its civic responsibilities with lackluster coverage on heath care reform, and instead has allowed (or enabled?) an ideological slant to surface.

Alpert, the nationally and locally accomplished newsman and weekly NMI columnist, has been dogged in the pursuit. Go here for his strongly-argued take on health care reform generally.

Then there was a skirmish last weekend.

The Journal apparently saw Alpert’s July 17 NMI column coming, and returned fire with Winthrop Quigley’s Sunday July 19 above-the-fold story A1 story, “Debate Hits Home.”

In case you missed it, the longtime Journal business writer gave the health care reform debate an in-depth look – a sobering take on the current system’s flaws, how providers are paid, how access might be expanded, and how costs could be contained. Quigley contributed all that courtesy of the analysis of nearly a dozen local experts.

(A companion piece by the Journal’s Washington-based reporter, Michael Coleman, surveyed each member of the state’s congressional delegation on the current bills circulating in the House and Senate – even if the early verdict was mostly muddled.)

Of course, Alpert’s point could be that this should have been happening much earlier.

As to Alpert’s point that an ideological bias is playing out in the coverage overall, I’m agnostic.

But as a regular Journal reader not usually given to broad generalizations about headlines or bias in wire stories, there were two front page wire stories last week that did give me pause.

Here’s the headlines: “Health Reform’s Cost Questioned,” a news story picked up from the Washington Post on July 17. And “$1.5 Trillion Overhaul,” an Associated Press story, on July 15.

You couldn’t miss the second one as it was combined with a large photo of pretty much the entire congressional Democratic leadership, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right underneath it.

Two stories do not a convincing pattern make, but I’m still wondering if the debate over health care reform is being reduced to one much-too-simple question: How much does it cost?

As if health care reform were like a box of cereal you can just grab from the grocery store shelf. Or alternatively, as if economic models can flawlessly predict the long-term financial effects of changes to the hugely complicated assortment of moving parts we call modern health care.

How about some other questions, like: How is it that other countries spend much less and have better outcomes? How can reform help get Americans eating better, exercising more?

Maybe the biggest leap: That journalists can do a good job explaining it all.

For this past weekend’s New Mexico In Focus, I dutifully asked state Sen. Dede Feldman the “how do you pay for it?” question. But I really tried to tease out was how does New Mexico’s health care system, and recent efforts to reform it, inform the debate currently playing out on Capitol Hill.

(Watch the 10 minute interview to the left.)

Feldman is an Albuqueque Democrat and veteran of the state’s efforts to reform health care — such as they’ve been — and last month she took part in a White House listening session designed to solicit input from local leaders. Feldman talked about that session and made her own case for President Obama’s current push.

And after all that, the only firm conclusion I can venture is that heath care reform is much harder that it sounds.

I guess there’s a reason the system hasn’t been reformed for decades.