Well, who would have guessed?

From lambert at Corrente, this choice bit on the public option:

When the “public option” campaign began, its leaders promoted a huge “Medicare-like” program that would enroll about 130 million people. Such a program would dwarf even Medicare, which, with its 45 million enrollees, is the nation’s largest health insurer, public or private. But today “public option” advocates sing the praises of tiny “public options” contained in congressional legislation sponsored by leading Democrats that bear no resemblance to the original model.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the “public options” described in the Democrats’ legislation might enroll 10 million people and will have virtually no effect on health care costs, which means the “public options” cannot, by themselves, have any effect on the number of uninsured. But the leaders of the “public option” movement haven’t told the public they have abandoned their original vision. It’s high time they did.

France spends half as much as we do on health care -- and that's the second highest figure. France has a public/private system, eveyone is covered, and by all reports care is excellent and efficiently administered. Somehow, American can't manage something like that.

Jane Hamsher has a take on this as well.

Obama's numbers on health care are tanking. And much as I'd love to believe it's because he hasn't embraced a public plan aggressively enough, it's probably more due to the relentless hammering he's getting from the GOP over the cost. It's a cumulative bill, as the cost of the bank bailouts and the auto company bailouts and the IMF bailout and the big coal bailout and the stimulus start to add up in the public mind. From a political perspective, Obama wants it off his plate.

And that means that the calls from Joe Lieberman, the Republicans and the Blue Dogs to "slow things down" are toxic. He doesn't want this dragging on, with each day giving Boehner and DeMint more time to hammer him. He wants it done.

Which works out well for progressives -- because getting a bill passed in the House and the Senate before the recess means that members of Congress won't go home and get pounded by millions of dollars' worth of ads that might change their votes. It also means that Obama needs to shore up the base, which means that a public plan is very much on his agenda.

But if one of them has to go, he'll sacrifice the public plan for speed. So, I'm not quite where DDay is. I think the battle is still very much on.

I'd like to get Digby's thoughts on this as well, but I'm losing focus on it, and she's written a lot, along with Dday, on the issues here. Maybe later.

At any rate, what we're being promised -- or what it seems we're being promised -- isn't even being discussed in Congress, and the guy we elected to lead us is dying to get out from under.

Yeah,and today is Wednesday.

Update:

Here's a piece from NYT that points out at least part of the mess that's being made:

This is the crux of the issue, economists say: the current fee-for-service system needs to be remade. The administration has made some progress, by proposing a powerful new Medicare overseer who could force the program to pay for good results and stop paying for bad ones.

But even a strong Medicare plan won’t be enough. Reform will need to attack the piecemeal system in numerous ways. Among the most promising, which Mr. Obama has resisted, is a limit on tax subsidies for the costliest health insurance plans. This limit would give households and employers a reason to become smarter shoppers.

Above all, reform can’t revolve around politely asking the rest of the medical system to become more like the Cleveland Clinic.

In recent weeks, polls have shown that a solid majority of Americans support the stated goals of health reform. Most want the uninsured to be covered and want the option of a government-run insurance plan. Yet the polls also show that people are worried about the package emerging from Congress.

Maybe they have a point.

I'm worried about what Congress is coming up with. I'm beginning to think we all should be -- except, of course, for the insurance companies.