Technology Made Health Care Reform Personal

Alone among the branches of government, the judiciary is meant to stay above the hurly burly of daily politicking and heartrending stories, and to take a 30,000 foot view of the world. There are no harrowing tales of uninsured children -- let alone doomed grandmothers -- in Thursday’s ruling on President Obama’s landmark health care reform package.

Justice Stephen Breyer in particular has offered some fascinating disquisitions on how the court looks at the individual sob stories that might result from its rulings. Bottom line: sorry, but that’s not our job. We deal with principles, not people.

The other two branches, of course, try to balance the good of the many with the compelling stories of the few. The health care fight in particular was notable not just for its vitriol but for the way technology allowed the Obama administration to tailor its argument to individual citizens.

By coincidence, I spoke yesterday with Ed Mullen, a freelance Web designer in Jersey City who was drafted onto the Health and Human Services Department team that built Healthcare.gov, one of the first tangible results of the Affordable Care Act.

The site includes a tool that functions something like a proto-insurance exchange, showing Americans what their private insurance options are based on their age, employment status and other information.

Mullen was lead designer on the project. The most important thing he brought to the team, though, he told me, was being the citizen in chief. As a self-employed designer who had to buy his own health insurance, he knew exactly what he wanted out of the site and when it wasn’t delivering.

Healthcare.gov joins applications like TSA’s airport wait time app and the White House’s Buffett rule calculator as prime examples of the way interactive technology is now allowing agencies and lawmakers to say “this is how our policies are affecting you. Yes, you.”

The media is also using technology to tailor stories to the individual, of course. Check out this tool from the Washington Post, published in advance of today’s Supreme Court ruling upholding most elements of the health care law.