TIME Keeps Time with Healthcare Reform

News magazines are supposed to be a dying breed, but it appears that TIME magazine is placing its hopes on Obamacare to save it from the fate of its former rivals Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report.

TIME has been covering healthcare extensively beginning with last month’s book-length investigation into healthcare finances by Steven Brill, “Bitter Pill” (you can read our less-than-flattering review of the article here). Since then it has published several articles on the subject, and the most recent issue is no exception.

Kate Pickert writes a brief article containing an explanation of healthcare provider pricing and Medicare that Brill somehow overlooked for his article. Pickert explains the “ story behind the numbers contained on every hospital bill that’s rooted in the history of Medicare policy and individual hospital operation,” which demonstrates that publishes such prices is less an exercise in transparency than it is healthcare providers responding to the labrythine polices and regulations of Medicare.

There’s also a nice summary article of the effort behind setting up the health insurance exchanges and the efforts to promote the Oct. 1 opening of them.