Headlines were made last week concerning revelations that a key researcher who was part of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis experiment had also headed a 1940s project in Guatemala that deliberately inoculated prisoners and insane asylum inmates with various venereal diseases. But there have been many more examples of U.S. government experimentation on unwitting subjects, including CIA experiments on detainees held in the “war on terror.”

A message Thursday from Health and Human Services chief Kathleen Sebelius is unusual not just for its tough language toward health insurers, but because it exists at all. In a letter to the insurance industry’s lobbying and trade association, Sebelius flatly warns insurers to cut it out with blaming their double-digit price hikes on federal health reform.

Is the IV Bag half-empty or half-full? Theda Skocpol, the author of a forthcoming book on President Barack Obama’s health care reforms, argues in the Nation that progressives are underrating reform.

Massachusetts, as did Obama with his health care reform bill, side-stepped the politically difficult task of containing runaway medical costs. Massachusetts is now paying a steep price.

Weekly Pulse: The Religious Right vs. Birth Control

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Does health care reform’s promise of preventive care extend to free birth control? Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services have 18 months to decide whether to require insurers to provide oral contraceptives, IUDs, and other prescription birth control with no co-pay. With pro-choice Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at the helm, HHS is expected to say yes.

[Update: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that birth control will not be on the White House's preliminary list of free preventive services, to be issued today. However, as Miriam Perez of feministing explains, HHS will ultimately have the final word. Observers, including Dana Goldstein who covers reproductive rights for the Daily Beast, are optimistic that the pro-choice side will carry the day at HHS.]

Despite the torture it might inflict the interview is a must watch for any self respecting Democrat. It will amaze and hopefully anger the Dems for being pushed into mouthing such malarkey, especially come November. I wonder how can the President and his advisers not see the obvious folly of their calculations.

An example of what the Obama admin is really about

This week the chairs of five key Congressional committees arrived at a blueprint for healthcare reform that includes a public option–government administered health insurance for everyone who wants it. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius began her confirmation hearings to become the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.

This is a special edition of the Weekly Pulse dedicated to profiling the two newest nominees for Obama’s healthcare team, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for Secretary of Health and Human Services and Nancy-Ann DeParle for health czar.

This week in the Pulse, we learn that the office of the health czar may be on life support. Why might the Obama administration pull the plug on the a proposed Congressional point person on healthcare? What that say about the prognosis for healthcare reform in general?