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Matt Lauer: Is it dead?This is all very fascinating because I read in my Bangor Daily News this morning an Associated Press story with the lede,
Howard Dean: No, you really can't do health reform without it.
Bowing to Republican pressure and an uneasy public, President Obama's administration signaled Sunday it is ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system.The idea is Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said over the weekend that the public option is "not the essential element" of health reform. Lauer had an Obama quote calling the public option a "sliver" of the total effort, in other words something easily cast aside in compromise.
Howard Dean, on the other hand, evidently sees the public option as something comparable to Medicare or the VA system. That looks like fantasy to me. Obama certainly does not and probably never has given public option this kind of weight.
I'll see you at the town office, where I'll be signing my Green Party registration card.
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