There's natural increasing blogging interest here in health care policy as the administration prepares to push for it. I recalled all of Maggie Mahar's excellent posts on the issue in  here on TPMCafe circa 2007, where she spent a lot of time interacting with commenters, answering their questions, and informing them further with detailed knowledge about realities.

I went to find those posts, and it's highly unfortunate: you don't even have them unloaded into your database available here! Her archive is empty, she has not been re-registered. I found by google search that they are only available individually and only if you know what to search for, and are still not in the new format so the comments are out of order. They are in some kind of strange database created by Apperceptive, here's an example.

Whether or not you can retrieve her past postings here, I think your audience would very much benefit from new postings from her here as the health care reform debate ramps up.  Instead of bloggers just repeating the same basic arguments over and over that will go nowhere, they might learn from her more of the actual realities going on that would enable them to be more effective in their arguments and any activism they might be interested in pursuing.

For those interested in the meantime, she has her own blog:  http://www.healthbeatblog.org/

This story really needs more attention than it's getting. I see a lot of people interested in the health insurance problem thinking that health care reform hinges on who gets the HHS secretary post; I doubt that that will matter  so much after reading this:

Health Care Industry in Talks to Shape Policy
by Robert Pear, New York Times, February 20:

Since last fall, many of the leading figures in the nation's long-running health care debate have been meeting secretly in a Senate hearing room. Now, with the blessing of the Senate's leading proponent of universal health insurance, Edward M. Kennedy, they appear to be inching toward a consensus that could reshape the debate.

Many of the parties, from big insurance companies to lobbyists for consumers, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies, are embracing the idea that comprehensive health care legislation should include a requirement that every American carry insurance.

While not all industry groups are in complete agreement, there is enough of a consensus, according to people who have attended the meetings, that they have begun to tackle the next steps: how to enforce the requirement for everyone to have health insurance; how to make insurance affordable to the uninsured; and whether to require employers to help buy coverage for their employees.

The talks, which are taking place behind closed doors, are unusual. Lobbyists for a wide range of interest groups -- some of which were involved in defeating national health legislation in 1993-4 -- are meeting with the staff of Mr. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, in a search for common ground.

While President Obama is not directly represented in the talks, the White House has been kept informed and is encouraging the Senate effort as a way to get the ball rolling on health legislation.

....The 20 people who regularly attend the meetings on Capitol Hill include lobbyists for AARP, Aetna, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the American Cancer Society, the American Medical Association, America's Health Insurance Plans, the Business Roundtable, Easter Seals, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the United States Chamber of Commerce....

The full article suggests a consensus is really being formed. Once this is done, what this group wants done is most likely what the president and Congress will push for, because they'll have these lobbyists at their back.