Krugman asks, and answers "politics" (that is, right wing bromides like "government is the problem"). Of course:

I am no expert on healthcare, and nor do I play one on TV. But unlike the summer's theatrical extravaganzas staged in "town hall" terms, there's good information headed to Congress, and I know good information when I see it. So does Bill Moyers.

She's written a previous book not about medicine but about money.

Paul Krugman praises Maggie Mahar's work in The New York Times:

Yves on Krugman's column today. She writes:

My big beef is that he didn’t go far enough and is WAAY too forgiving of the motivations and actions of Larry Summers and by extension, Team Obama.

Somebody kidnapped Paul Krugman at that White House dinner, didn't they? Krugman wrote:

Why the change in tone? Administration officials are furious at the way the financial industry, just months after receiving a gigantic taxpayer bailout, is lobbying fiercely against serious reform. But you have to wonder what they expected to happen. They followed a softly, softly policy, providing aid with few strings, back when all of Wall Street was on the ropes; this left them with very little leverage over firms like Goldman that are now, once again, making a lot of money.

Yves comments:

So said Pyrrhus, of the Pyrrhic Victory. And Professor Krugman:

So the odds now are that the [health care reform] thing hangs together, and reform is indeed enacted this year. It will be a highly flawed product; we’ll probably spend much of the next decade trying to fix it.

But it does look as if it’s going to happen. And that will be a huge victory for ["]progressives["].

In what universe does a policy that we know going in will take 10 years to fix get declared a victory?

[Just cross-posted to Kos. How about a recommendation? And welcome, Eschatonians, Paul Krugman, Digby, Andrew Tobias, and Sadly, No readers. And Avedon, you know I do.]

[And readers, if you want others to read this post, you can use the Digg or Reddit buttons below to recommend it.]

ONE CURRENT PERMATHREAD on Big Orange is that Krugman and Obama are feuding or having a vendetta. Which, when you take a step back, is bizarre. That movement conservatives and Villagers like stone Bush enabler William Kristol, like David Brooks, Broderella, and Andrew Sullivan are all good with Obama isn't even mentioned in passing by Obama's fan base. And yet those same enthusiasts spend inordinate amounts of time vilifying Paul Krugman, a true progressive who was there for us from the earliest dark days of the Bush regime.

Curious. What's really happening?  Read more…