We could give the wealthy a balanced budget choice:

A public option, saving $150 billion from premium cuts that competition forces on wealthy private insurance companies.

No public option, with the forgone $150 billion collected as a surtax on the wealthy.

Let's see how that sorts out.

Via Firedoglake comes the below clip of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY)--a single-payer advocate--who says the White House Democrats could lose up to 100 votes in the House if the public option gets stripped from health care reform.

FIFY, Weiner. You people in the Congress are the ones in charge of writing up and passing the bill. President Obama is the one who gets to sign it in the Rose Garden (or privately in his office (or not at all) if you guys fuck it all up). Don't put the blame on the President. That belongs with you and the other guys working with you.

Now get to work and stop blaming other people for your own screwups.

How about we also remove the exemption that the health insurance industry has from the anti trust laws! Bust these companies up!

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Paul Krugman, if you read the Swiss Menace carefully is also caving on the public option. Between the lines in the column you'll notice that he likens the US reform efforts as aiming toward a Swiss system, which when you read his blog, you discover does not have a public option in other words assuming strict regulation the public option is not "essential element"

Yglesias accurately describes the stakes

This Atlantic article on our badly broken health care system by David Goldhill is very good. It makes the case, correctly, that the entire health care system should be totally different from how it is. I agree with a lot of it. But I think Goldhill is deploying his insights to the pretty insidious purpose of arguing against the kind of health reforms that now exist in the congress. The simple fact of the matter is that defeating the current reform effort is not going to lead to the emergence of some alternative, radically different health care reform. Defeat of the current legislative effort will demoralize proponents of health reform, teach politicians that any talk of modifying Medicare is politically toxic, and basically result in another 10-15 years of the status quo followed by some kind of budget crisis.

Passing the kind of ideas that are currently on the table would still leave us with a system with a lot of problems. But it would ameliorate several of those problems, and solve a few. It would also, I think, teach politicians the lesson that it’s possible to change the health care system. And that might lead to more and better reforms down the road.

He also provides a link to this excellent Reform Flow Chart

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_BTt4cJQj7GI/Sol7S9NA7QI/AAAAAAAAACo/YIwN-rOQCRQ/s1600-h/hayes_flowchart.PNG

My sole concern at this point is process - shut Circus Baucus down and get to conference as soon as possible.

Make no mistake - 'Bagger led, the GOP's objective is to defeat any form of health care reform.

Dems need to reframe the discussion. Call it the American Option.

If there was ever a time for a national referendum--THEN THIS IS DEFINITELY IT? Of all the issues the ones that will influence the American peoples economy, culture, language and society for decades to come, is Health care and illegal immigration. Neither political party, special interest lobbyists nor anybody else should be able to use their influence the running of our country. The United States--VOTER--should have the last word, not corrupt members of the Democratic leadership, the Republican minority party and certainly not La Raza or ACLU, US Chamber of Commerce, Council of Foreign Relations, Cato Institute, billionaire George Soros, Ford Foundation and a multitude of self interest groups. In health care the insurance companies have used their political currency, to weaken any prospect of a Canadian or European style public health care option. 2/3 of America insist on the single payer system like Canada and the European developed nations.

The rest of these despicable organizations want the free flow of cheap labor that is already swarming across our nation, even though we are in a deep recession and millions of US citizens and legal residence are jobless. As I speak 1.5 million new immigrants entered America and that's not counting the illegal aliens who extract from taxpayers everyday. Our politicians can no longer demand of the people, to pay for foreign national health care, when they cannot afford it for their own families? How many more years are the people to be dictated to the power of profiteering insurance companies? How many decades must taxpayers is forced to pay for illegal immigrants and families, who have already broken our laws of sovereignty and expect to be rewarded with another blanket AMNESTY.

How can we assume our legislators to honor the “Rule of Law”, when they have already stone-walled us over the 1986 immigration enforcement law? Millions of loyal Americans who have already commanded E-Verify extraction tool in the workplace (section of the SAVE ACT) 287 G police enforcement, no match letter and the ICE raids of illegal immigrant. But we must maintain the bombardment if you want a health care public option choice? Whether you want to keep on supporting the impoverished, unschooled of foreign nations that skirt our laws? CALL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES FOR WHAT YOU WANT AT 202-224-3121? NOT WHAT THE SPECIAL INTEREST LOBBY HAS PAID FOR? Read about the trillions to be spent on giving AMNESTY to illegal immigrants at the Heritage Foundation. GOOGLE more facts on the web, or search for the truth at NUMBERSUSA.

Observe this PETITION to STOP any health care to illegal immigrants at: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/nohealthcareforillegals

Brittanicus has it. In this case our Republic form of government is not working because of the control of special interests. Why not let the voters decide such an important issue? It is obvious the politicians have no concern for the welfare of our citizens.