In his August 30 column, Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander declared policy the “Missing Ingredient” in the paper's health care coverage, and pointed out that the vast majority of the paper's coverage had focused on “political maneuvering or protests.” Today, the news section makes a welcome response to this criticism, with several policy-focused offerings highlighting the flaws in the current health care system and the solutions proposed by Democrats.

In a front-page story, the Post reports on rescission, the practice by insurance companies of investigating the medical histories of people who become ill and submit claims for expensive treatments, on the grounds that those individuals had pre-existing conditions. The Post tells the story of Sally Marrari, whose coverage was rescinded following a 2006 diagnosis of a thyroid disorder, fluid in the heart and lupus on the grounds that she had not listed on a health questionnaire a “back problem” that she says she didn't know she had. As the Post notes, all health reform bills currently under discussion would ban this practice.

Rescission was the subject of a heart-wrenching hearing earlier this summer, in which former policyholders who had been subject to the practice told their stories. As we noted at the time, the evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS all ignored the hearing – the Post is far from the only news outlet that has a problem relating information about policy rather than politics.

The rescission article isn't the Post's only offering for the day – in a two-page spread teased with an A1 above-the-fold graphic, the paper presents what can only be called a tour-de-force of health care reporting -- dare I say it, the most substantive piece of writing to emerge from the pen of Ceci Connolly (best-known for inventing the Al Gore Love Canal “scandal” entirely out of whole cloth) in ages.

In an easily accessible yet detailed piece accompanied by useful graphics, Connolloy and Alec MacGillis address “8 Questions on Health Care Reform,” laying out detailed explanations of how the Democratic reform proposals will affect you if you have health insurance, lack it, or are on Medicare – you know, the sorts of questions you might have if you have been reading the Post this year. The Post also includes a sidebar glossary providing useful definitions for terms like “Exchange” and “Comparative Effectiveness.” It really is very well done, though it would have been nice if the Post had decided not to wait until September to give their readers this kind of detail.

As Ezra Klein suggests, this is the sort of piece that the paper should do everything it can to promote:

It's the sort of article that people sometimes say the media don't publish, but the actual problem is that it doesn't get republished. If you miss it in today's Post, you've simply missed it. Which is a shame, because this article is probably the most useful thing we'll publish for the people who doesn't read every newspaper every day.

But even if newspapers don't do reruns, the internet does archives. This article could be expanded as new questions arise, and it could be prominently included in the link box accompanying future health-care articles The Washington Post publishes. It need not disappear into the ether.

On a similar note, Los Angeles Times' Kristina Sherry wrote an excellent glossary of key terms in the health care debate that anyone doing any reporting at all on the subject simply needs to read. It's not perfect (opponents of health care reform call EVERYTHING “socialized medicine,” not just a single-payer system), but would certainly be useful to, say, Chris Wallace and Lou Dobbs, in case they missed my own primer last month.

Of course, it's not all good news on the substance front – today, Politico debuts its new section, CLICK, which “covers the latest news and gossip from Washington's social scene.” If you're wondering how that differs from the rest of Politico's reporting, or if you aren't interested in reading “Washington party animal” Luke Russert explainhow he's “worn khakis my entire life,” you will probably want to stay away.