Electronic Highways
The facts on health care policy
On any given day, health care policy can be complex and confusing. Add to the mix high emotion and politics, trying to understand the intricate details of the health care policy can be nearly impossible. Whether for personal or academic research, here are some resources that can answer many health care policy questions, with straightforward, fact-based points and free of bias.
Before delving into the myriad of health care policy resources available on the Internet, it is important to know the terminology. For anyone confused about terms like SCHIP, HIPAA and the “doughnut hole,” Kaiser Health News has a glossary of terms to help navigate the complexities of health care policy research.
There are a lot of portal sites that provide a one-stop-shop for health care policy links. A couple of portal sites of note are the University of Houston Law Center and the UB‘s Health Care Policy Wiki.
Legislative resources also are invaluable for doing health care policy research. Thomas.gov from the Library of Congress is a database of Congressional and legislative information, including bills, the Congressional Record—proceedings and debates of Congress—Congressional reports, legislative histories and public laws. Ultimately, this site will give information about bills that are before Congress and how members of Congress voted on them.
The UB Libraries have a wealth of databases and resources available for health care policy research. Some databases to consider using are:
• MEDLINE, the premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system and the preclinical sciences. Try building a search using these terms: Health Policy, Health Care Economics and Organizations, Insurance Coverage, Universal Coverage.
• LexisNexis Congressional, a product that indexes and provides selected full texts of Congressional publications, regulations, laws, legislative histories and background information on members of Congress.
• CQ Electronic Library, which provides access to CQ Public Affairs Collection (material on key public policy topics), CQ Researcher (weekly in-depth original reporting on major, controversial issues with complete summaries and bibliographies) and CQ Weekly (focuses primarily on legislative news and analysis).
• PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service), a database that indexes journal articles, books, and government documents.
• Academic Search Complete, which offers coverage of articles from more than 8,000 scholarly, trade and general-interest periodicals in all disciplines.
To avoid being confused by political pundits, spin and talking points, it is worthwhile to take a look FactCheck.org, a non-partisan watchdog group dedicated to debunking myths. Also, visit Snopes.com, an Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors and misinformation.
—Linda Hasman, University Libraries
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