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It's dispiriting, to be sure, RedConn. This "I'm all right, Jack" attitude has got to go.

I have a wonky policy question: How would the co-ops that some are suggesting as an alternative to the public option work?

I read on one left-of-center economic site that the only way they would bring costs down is if there was only one such co-op, and then it would amount to the same thing as the public option. But the piece didn't do a very good job of explaining why.

Bloomberg has a piece up saying Pelosi can't get a bill through the house without the public option, which is an interesting development. While Pelosi is obviously bargaining, it sounds like she may hold more chips than the press thinks based on the sound and fury generated at the town halls.

Reason I say that is, are the Blue Dogs really prepared to see nothing at all pass?

The Republicans clearly are, but somehow I doubt that conservative Democrats will fare all that well in the primaries if they end up with nothing at all.

Talk about a do-nothing Congress.

I see RedConn has a blog up today on some of the tall tales the insurance industry is telling. This morning I heard the flip side in an interview on NPR where the CEO of Wellpoint was defending the industry's lobbying efforts.

While much of what she said echoed what RedConn reports on, she also kept repeating the assertion that the industry was keenly interested in "reform" and had made great efforts to cooperate with Obama early on with that in mind. But never once did she mention what she meant by reform. Still, I fault the interviewer as much as the CEO for that, as the question of "Such as?" never once came up.

Meanwhile, I keep hearing Paul Krugman insist that something like 30 percent of the typical health insurance premium goes to efforts not to pay claims, a process he calls administrative.

But then you hear the industry say its administrative costs are more like one to threepercent.

Something obviously is getting lost in translation here. My hunch is that what Krugman is calling administration is really underwriting, but by trying, however admirably, to avoid the latter term for fear New York Times readers don't readily understand what that is, he is letting the industry get away with some semantical sleight of hand.

Looks to me like those co-ops wouldn't accomplish much, based on the analysis I posed a blog about today. The analyst extrapolates a huge drop in market value for the four biggest health insurers if Obama goes with a public option instead of co-ops. That certainly suggests that co-ops would do relatively little to contain costs.

And that would leave stuff like electronic record-keeping and other efforts to cut waste. Anyone see anything that estimates how much that can actually do to reduce costs?

If reform doesn't do anything to slow the rising price of health care, then universal coverage may mean little in the end. And all this political bloodletting will have been for next to nothing.

Interesting view from the NAIC (National Association of Insurance Commissioners), which said that health care reform is without a doubt necessary, but views it like auto insurance, meaning mandatory.

"Of course, if coverage is guaranteed for all, there will be some who will wait until they become sick to purchase that coverage," wrote the NAIC in a press release this week.

It worries that only those with higher costs and likelihood of care would participate in the system.

"The only effective answer to these concerns is to require everyone to purchase health insurance, much as states already require the purchase of auto insurance."

I'm not sure what to think of it but it sure seems like an odd comparison. I mean, with auto insurance, at least it is a choice: I don' want to own a car so I don't have to pay insurance. But with health insurance, there's an aspect a lot more social to it and but there is no choice, everybody has a health, whether it is good or bad.