HealthSpeak: Knock Knock. Who's There? Liberal Bloggers on Health Care.

April 13, 2007

Knock Knock. Who's There? Liberal Bloggers on Health Care.

by Peter Pitts

Liberal bloggers on health care who?

The wonderful proliferation of blogs devoted to health care in general and pharmaceuticals in particular begs the question -- who's doing it?

Just came across a good study by the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (a part of the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management).

Many interesting factoids on the issue of political blogs and their readership. Not a lot on health care specifically, but some data did pop out:

* Daily political blog readers are disproportionately "Strong Democrat" and "Strong Liberal."

* Of Democrats who read political blogs daily, 72% agree "strongly" that "Government should provide health insurance for the uninsured." For Democrats who are not daily political blog readers, that number is 53%.

* Same question for Republicans returns a 5% "strongly agree" for political blog readers and 6% for all others.

Perhaps one take-away is that the growing number of health care blogs represent the Democrat "ownership" of the blogosphere. Indeed the study opines that "Some observers have pointed out that conservatives appear to dominate in talk radio while liberals have a greater presence in political blogs."

Ergo, the more blogs on health care and health care related issues (such as the FDA, MMA, Evidence-Based Medicine, etc.) the more disproportionate the liberal voice.

Here's a link to the complete report:

http://www.ipdi.org/UploadedFiles/The%20Audience%20for%20Political%20Blogs.pdf

And certainly grist for the mill for those in Big Pharma who don't think they should enter the fray.

As far as I'm concerned -- the more the better.

Posted by peterpitts at April 13, 2007 08:13 AM