In Transition

President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team is trying an interesting experiment with Web technology: It is hosting an online discussion where people can sound off about the problems they see with the health care system — and what they think the Obama administration should do to fix them.

It even starts off with a video in which two transition team advisers — Dora Hughes, M.D., and Lauren Aronson, both members of the health care policy working group — ask for feedback from the public.

It’s unusual to see policy aides participating in these kinds of videos, and Hughes and Aronson don’t look entirely comfortable doing it, but Obama did promise that his administration officials would be active participants in the open government he promised on the campaign trail.

The resulting comments have included some thoughtful discussions of the importance of preventive care, the way priorities can get skewed by profit motives, the nursing shortage, the dilemma of who should pay for coverage, and even the need for people to take more responsibility for maintaining their own health. And, of course, there are the usual insults people hurl at each other. (“Enough of this childish, selfish nonsense. If you want to be left to your own devices, you move!”)

The real question, though, is whether the online discussion will produce ideas the Obama health care policy team can use, or whether it will be just another device to let people feel like they’ve been heard. That’s especially true given that the actual health care plan will have to go through Congress, and it’s not clear how many of the key lawmakers (or staff members) will ever see the discussion thread taking place on the transition team Web site right now.

Still, with roughly 1,900 comments so far — in an online discussion that is less than 24 hours old — it seems there are plenty of people who want to make this experiment in high-tech democracy work.

— David Nather