The argument over this year's health care reform bill has enough pro and cons to fill 3 DU forums, but Ill keep it simple. For me, no public option equals no deal. Period. If that gives Lieberman the power to kill it, so be it. There are many good things about this legislation, but many bad things also. The whole effort is riddled with compromises, so what's the big deal about one more? Ask yonder Camel, piled high with straw. There always comes a breaking point.

The public option has been whittled down to a mere 6 million users in the current House bill with the math skewed to help it fail but at least, in the House, it still lives to see the light of day. Where there's life there's hope, so possibly this meager public option could be improved on by future sessions of Congress. A beachhead can always be expanded on but without one there is nothing to build on, just an unbroken massing of entrenched emboldened opposition. If the current concerted national effort to reform our heath insurance system ends with no public option put in place, there is absolutely no reason to think one will be added anytime in the foreseeable future. AFTER the moment is ripe, opportunity rots away. Timing is everything.

Who here believes that health care reform will succeed in America without at the very least establishing a robust public option that private insurers must compete against? Without an opening toward daylight that a public option offers, we would be locking Americans into a closed failed insurance system headed toward ever greater failure. Before signing on for Democratic sponsored reform failure I would rather simply scrap it and blame the Republicans for thwarting reform instead. There needs to be a new bottom line in Washington with evasions no longer accepted: Health care reform must minimally include a public option or there will not be health care reform passed until it does. Politics in Washington shows that only those who credibly draw bold lines in the sand get their bottom line respected. Once that reality sets in, and only after that reality sets in, a public option will cease being seen as an optional component of health care reform. It must be no more "subject to negotiations" than banning preexisting condition exclusions is thought of being as today. It is at the heart of any real reform.