Story ides about covering small business owners and health care

By Gary Haber

The (Wilmington) News Journal

With health-care a key issue in the presidential election, experts at SABEW’s fall conference offered enough suggestions for stories to fill any reporter’s notebook.

The panelists for the session on “Small business: High stakes in health-care reform” included: Leonard Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center and senior fellow at The Urban Institute; Rob Edmund, director of policy and external relations for the Ohio Business Roundtable; Scott Leitz, assistant commissioner for the Minnesota Department of Health, and Joanne Kenen, senior writer in the health policy program at the New America Foundation. Kevin Noblet, SABEW secretary, moderated the panel.

Here are 10 story suggestions from the session:

1. Analyze the Obama and McCain health-care plans through the eyes of a family or business that would be particularly affected, suggested Kenen, a former health-care reporter for Reuters.

2. Look for creative ways employers are managing health-care costs. To keep a lid on costs, some companies are pushing workers to adopt healthier living practices, such as not hiring smokers, Edmund said.

3. Are employers in your area dropping health-insurance coverage, or passing through higher co-payments and deductibles to the point that the workers can no longer afford coverage?

4. Talk to small business owners about how they make decisions about health insurance and where they get their information. You can localize your story by finding health-care experts in your area. Most universities have health-care policy experts, Kenen said.

5. Look at what your state is doing to solve the health-care crisis. Minnesota, which has the second-lowest uninsured rate behind only Massachusetts, has programs to cut obesity and smoking rates, make health- care costs more transparent and establish a uniform, statewide system for measuring health-care quality, Leitz said.

6. What are hospitals in your area doing to prepare for Medicare rules going into effect Oct. 1 when the federal government will no longer pay hospitals and doctors for certain avoidable medical mistakes?

7. Are non-profit hospitals providing enough free medical care for the poor and uninsured to warrant their not-for-profit tax status?

8. Is your state looking to set up a small-business insurance pool in which companies band together to purchase insurance? The idea is that savings will come from lower administrative costs and better bargaining power with doctors and hospitals, but pools have struggled to get enough companies to join.

9. Examine the health-insurance crisis through the struggles of local doctor offices to offer coverage to their own employees.

10. Look for the hidden health-care aspects in stories, Kenen said. For example, what impact is the high cost of gas having on people who have to drive long distances to dialysis treatment several times a week?

Posted Sept. 11, 2008