The public option was never just a “sliver” as Obama tried to claim. It was about a fundamental moral right and the role of government. But what it was also about was a huge amount of money.

The big story here is not that the White House wants to crush Byron Dorgan’s reimportation amendment and hold up their deal with Big PhRMa – that’s been clear for a while. The big news is that Dorgan’s fighting back. . .

Well, that did not take long. Earlier today, I wrote how closely the new “grand compromise” on the public option at least seemed to closely resemble the theoretical alternative I wrote about several months ago based on several smart ideas. At the time, I predicted that these ideas would be no more tolerable to the conservative Democrats and Olympia Snowe than the public option. The reason is that these senators do not oppose the public option for ideological reasons. They oppose it because they will oppose anything that hurts the health insurance corporations’ profits. It appears I was 100% correct.

Jay Rockefeller is making a lot of noise about a provision in the House health care bill that would fold the SCHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program) into the insurance exchanges when they begin running in 2013. Rockefeller, who changed the Senate Finance Committee bill to rescue SCHIP from the same fate, released this statement [...]

And the yo-yo moves back up. TPM gets multiple sources confirming earlier reporting, which was denied at one point, that the President prefers the trigger option that would keep Olympia Snowe (R-ME) in the fold on an overall health care bill to a public option with an opt-out mechanism for the states, a version Harry [...]

  Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) told Poltico that he felt Harry Reid (D-NV) and the White House were leaning toward a national public option with an opt-out:   Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) briefed Nelson and other Democratic centrists on Thursday morning. “I keep hearing there is a lot of leaning toward some sort [...]

  The campaign arm of the DNC, Organizing For America, has delivered over 150,000 phone calls, at last count, in favor of health care reform. The President himself will deliver remarks at a “Time To Deliver” call party tonight.   Less clear is what these callers are actually asking for in the health care reform [...]

ROCKEFELLER: Harry Reid can put into that mark whatever he wants. And so if he puts in mine – less likely – Chuck Schumer’s – more likely, – if he decides to do that, then it’ll take 60 votes to take it out because it will be in the mark and that’s the genius of that melding of both ways.

“We can’t count on insurance companies. They are just maximizing their profits. They are sticking it to consumers.

“I am all for letting insurance companies compete. But I want them to compete in a system that offers real health-care insurance.

What’s the scope of the SSCI investigation and where does that lead us?