Where do health care bloggers fit in?

I subscribe to a good number of health care blogs. There are subtle nuances -- some slant towards markets while others towards policy; some focus on details of running a hospital or specific health issues, while others on big-pictures such as health care reform or cost structures; some are individual thinkers contributing their observations while others are multi-blogger efforts backed by well-known organizations. This speaks to the great interest that exists among the blogging community in health care issues, as well as just how big and diverse the "health care" umbrella is.

Call me narcissistic, but I can't help but wonder about the downstream impact that blogging (a.k.a. my words and time) has on the health care field. In fields that survive on innovation such as entreprenuership and philanthropy, blogs are a quick and en mass way of exchanging ideas. These ideas, half-baked as they might be, build on each other and drive the field forward. But health care sits at a unique intersection -- between private markets and public policy, between inherited hierarchies and incentives-based structures, between old world traditions and a new eye for efficiency and evidence-driven action. So where do the words that float around in the health care blogsphere go? Do old guard movers and shakers in Washington spend time listening to not their constituents and consumers of the health care system, but thinkers who have educated opinions about change? How much, or where, does idea-exchange drive health care like in entreprenuership?