Monday and Tuesday links

This picture is from a Slate article describing how the Right is saying that the Stimulus hasn't worked and more stimulus would be a waste. Of course, at most only about 25% of the stimulus has been spent as that is when the stimulus was designed to be spent. One could argue that the timing of when the stimulus would be spent has been done poorly, but to call the stimulus a failure is dumb and simply a political stunt.

On the health care front, the NYT has an article about how health care lobbyists are flooding Washington to get last minute changes into the bills so that the reforms will fall flat. The article makes me feel more and more supportive of a government-run health plan. In support of this news, and article at Truthout.org is claiming that these lobbyists are telling Congress that rate hikes will be inevitable if the reforms pass as they are currently proposed. And now, the health care industry has released a report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) that claims that utter chaos will ensue if the current reforms do get passed. That set off quite a firestorm, and PWC is now backing away from it's own report. Hee Hee. Robert Reich says that this report is quite a bomb, but one that has exploded under the insurers. He is saying that this report does nothing except strengthen the case for a strong public option. Since the report claims that if the current reforms will cause premiums to increase faster and higher, it's hard to argue against him. It seems like insurance companies are getting desperate, as the Senate Finance Committee is voting on the Reform bill today and it's looks like it will pass the committee and move on to a floor vote. This is the farthest any kind of health care reform has gotten, and the tactics of the insurance industry are getting more and more desperate. From Reich's post:

Now's the time for Congress and the White House to say to the insurance industry: You want to play hardball? Okay. We'll play it, too. You didn't want a public insurance option. That was one of your conditions for supporting the bill. You wanted gigantic profits from having thirty million new paying customers and the market to yourself. The Senate Finance Committee and the White House agreed because they wanted your support and were afraid of the negative ads and hurricane of opposition you could finance. But you're even greedier than we imagined. And now you've demonstrated that greed to the American people. They don't want to turn over even more of their hard-earned money to you. So, insurance companies, we've got news for you. We're going to make sure Americans have the freedom to choose a public insurance option that's cheaper and better, and you're going to have to work hard to keep them your customers.

UPDATE: Timothy Noah at Slate looks at the PWC report and details how the report shows that the government is better at containing costs than the private market. The more this gets looked at, the worse the health care industry looks.