Without the public option, this bill does nothing but benefit the insurance industry – now everyone has to buy insurance, their only option is to buy it from the private insurance industry, and the industry (while they must now cover people with preexisting conditions) can charge a perhaps prohibitively more expensive amount to cover such preexisting conditions. It’s a joke.

But the biggest joke is that the Obama administration has gotten itself into a jam from which I don’t see a way out. It has staked so much political capital on getting health care reform passed that it has to see something passed. But this current bill is garbage, and if it is passed, people are going to end up paying considerably more for insurance with no public option. So the Obama administration is going to be blamed for the consequences of this bad bill.

If I were Obama, I would kill this bill and say that he is going to step back and reconsider this issue and revisit health care with the white house, not congress, taking the lead on crafting the bill. While doing so would cost him politically, I think the fallout would be less than if the Democrats are saddled with responsibility for this terrible bill.