Updated from yesterday's version. Note: if you support the public option, please sign the petition at StandWithDrDean.com, send an e-mail to your senators, and support Blue America's planned tv ad campaign.

The White House and key Democratic senators, including Iowa's Tom Harkin, appear to be walking into a trap for the sake of bipartisan agreement on health care in the Senate.

There is growing support for a fake "public option," as opposed to a government health insurance plan that would compete directly with private insurance companies.

If Congress passes this kind of deal and President Barack Obama signs it, we will get a enormously expensive non-solution to an enormous problem, and Democrats will pay the political price.

After the jump I'll explain why political hacks as well as policy wonks should refuse the latest efforts to derail the public option.

UPDATE: Check out the numbers from a brand-new New York Times/CBS nationwide poll: Asked, "Would you favor or oppose the government's offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private insurance plans?" 72 percent of respondents said "favor," including 87 percent of Democrats, 73 percent of independents, and 50 percent of Republicans.

There's more...

In an interview with Ezra Klein, the former Majority Leader restates his support for a public option:

You made headlines the other day for dismissing the need for a public plan. Want to talk a bit more on that?

I don't know where that came from. We've been pushing back on that all day. I didn't say that. I have said emphatically I support a public plan. A Medicare-for-all public plan. Any federal plan. For all the reasons that have been made for years. It's important for cost, for choice, for competition, for popularity. I strongly support it.

Good to hear. It's a little weird that Daschle says he doesn't know "where that came from," considering the clarity of the source. But in the end, the confusion wound up a net positive, because a prominent Democrat faced blowback for appearing to back off a public option. Such a compromise cannot be perceived as an acceptable option.

Second, Daschle stands behind using "reconciliation" as a procedural 50-vote fallback option in the Senate:

I think [reconciliation is] still the only real fallback legislative strategy we've got. We're going to try and work this through the policy track as long as we can. I think that gives us until September. But if it fails by then, we move to the budget process.

I think Kent Conrad brings up practical reasons why it's not our first choice. But I would take the reconciliation process, even with its shortcomings, over no process at all.

There are Republicans (and even a handful of Dems) who oppose using the budget process to drop the Senate vote threshold on health care to 50. But Daschle's behind it.

There's more...

Note: if you support the public option, please sign the petition at StandWithDrDean.com, send an e-mail to your senators, and support Blue America's planned tv ad campaign.

The White House and key Democratic senators, including Iowa's Tom Harkin, appear to be walking into a trap for the sake of bipartisan agreement on health care in the Senate.

There is growing support for a fake "public option," as opposed to a government health insurance plan that would compete directly with private insurance companies.

If Congress passes this kind of deal and President Barack Obama signs it, we will get a enormously expensive non-solution to an enormous problem, and Democrats will pay the political price.

After the jump I'll explain why political hacks as well as policy wonks should refuse the latest efforts to derail the public option.

There's more...

This is immensely unhelpful:

Daschle, Dole Say Public Option Must Be Scrapped

ABC World News reported, "Former Senate leaders launched a bipartisan push for healthcare reform, but they took issue with a central feature of the President's plan, a public, government-run health insurance program." Bob Dole was shown saying, "If you want to stop this thing dead in its tracks, or dead on arrival, in my view, you put the public plan in it." ABC noted that even Tom Daschle, "once Obama's top healthcare adviser, said the public option probably needs to be scrapped." Daschle: "We've come too far and gained too much momentum for our efforts to fail over disagreement on one single issue."

"One single issue?" Oy.

The ground is starting to feel shaky on health care reform. Daschle was Obama's longtime rabbi on Capitol Hill - so if he's floating this view, it must not be dead in the White House. This is one to watch carefully...

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By Lindsay Beyerstein, TMC MediaWire blogger

The Obama administration may be about to pull the plug on the health czar. The position has gone unfilled since Obama's appointee-apparent, former Sen. Tom Daschle, withdrew his name from consideration for both czar and Secretary of Health and Human Services in early February. Several serious candidates are emerging in the unofficial race to lead HHS, but there's no corresponding shortlist for health czar.

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