The Public Option Was Defeated Today In The Senate…Or Was It?

The big news today seems to be that the Senate Finance Committee (where the Senate’s version of Obamacare has been stuck in the mud for weeks now) rejected two attempts to insert a “public option” into the health care bill.
This will tempt some Republicans to declare victory, but I think that’s what the Democrats want.

The Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday rejected two Democratic amendments that would have created a government-run “public option” as part an overhaul of the nation’s health-insurance system, with the panel’s chairman bowing to staunch Republican opposition that he said would prevent final passage of a bill containing such a provision.
After an amendment offered by Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) was voted down 15 to 8, the committee voted 13 to 10 to reject a second public-option provision introduced by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). The committee chairman, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), voted against both politically volatile amendments, saying he feared that a bill including either one would not get the 60 votes it would need for passage by the full Senate. …
In the end, Baucus and four other Democrats — Sen. Kent Conrad (N.D.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Bill Nelson (Fla.) and Thomas R. Carper (Del.) — joined all 10 Republicans on the committee in voting against the Rockefeller amendment. On the Schumer amendment, Baucus, Conrad and Lincoln voted with the Republicans to defeat it.

So there’s no explicit public option in the bill, but you know what is still in the bill? Government-created, government-subsidized, government-managed health care “co-ops.” Which, as Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid himself said, are the public option just called something else.

The debate came as the committee worked for a fifth day on an overall health-care reform bill authored by Baucus. His bill, which he says would cost nearly $900 billion over 10 years, contains no public option, favoring instead a system in which nonprofit cooperatives would offer health insurance to people who could not afford private companies’ plans.

If you ask me, this is a bit of political theater intended to both placate the liberal base (“see we tried to pass the public option!”) and assuage the fears of the public at large who have focused much of their dislike of Democrat-backed reform efforts on the “public option” (“see, they’re only co-ops!).
As I’ve been saying for a while, co-ops are the government option. They won’t be expressly run by the government. Instead, they’ll be the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of the health care industry. Ostensibly private companies that are government sponsored entities effectively in control of the government and used as a tool to manipulate the industry as a whole.
And we all know how well that ended with Fannie and Freddie.
This is no victory for opponents to government health care. This is just Democrat maneuvering.