Matt Taibi nails it:

The reason a real health-care bill is not going to get passed is simple: because nobody in Washington really wants it. …

…It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters. The situation we have here is an angry and desperate population that at long last has voted in a majority that it believes should be able to pass a health care bill. It expects something to be done. The task of the lawmakers on the Hill, at least as they see things, is to create the appearance of having done something. And that’s what they’re doing. …

…This whole business, it was a litmus test for whether or not we even have a functioning government. Here we had a political majority in congress and a popular president armed with oodles of political capital and backed by the overwhelming sentiment of perhaps 150 million Americans, and this government could not bring itself to offend ten thousand insurance men in order to pass a bill that addresses an urgent emergency.

We no longer have a functioning government, but I say we go down fighting. It’s imperative that Washington hear from us now. Your senators need to hear you want a public option or nothing. Your representative needs to hear you want a public option or nothing. The Sellout Six need to hear that people know they’re being sold out. The White House needs to hear that we expect the President to veto any legislation that does not contain the public option.

At Salon, Mike Madden writes that the public option isn’t dead yet.

Many Senate Democrats also still seem to prefer a public insurance option, rather than a co-op. Even lawmakers who were skeptical of the public option to begin with admit that the co-op idea is only picking up steam now because the Finance Committee is focusing on it. That might not be enough to carry it through. So lawmakers who aren’t involved in the talks aren’t quite willing to write off the Finance Committee’s compromise without seeing it. But they’re starting to run out of patience. The No. 2 Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said there was “high anxiety” as Baucus slogs through negotiations with the panel’s top Republican, Chuck Grassley of Iowa. “This is really behind closed doors with six senators,” Durbin said. “The rest of us are truly on the outside.” The only message Democratic leadership has really conveyed to Baucus? “Hurry up,” Durbin said. Baucus wouldn’t say much Tuesday about the progress of the talks, or when the talks will be done.

See also:

Joshua Holland, “How Corporate Media, Sellouts in Congress and Industry Bigs Have Hijacked the Health Care Debate”

Timothy Noah, “Why You Can’t Trust Your Health Insurer”

Must see:

Bill O’Reilly, dumbest man on the planet, says the U.S. has higher death rates than Canada because we have more people.