If Obama Discards Public Option, What's Left of Reform?

The public option has already been so dumbed-down and neutered that it is little more than a sliver.

The problem is that it may be the only sliver of real reform in his program.

Even with a robust public option, the president's initiative looks a lot like a bailout for the insurance industry --in stark contrast to the a single-payer reform that would replace industry profiteering with a not-for-profit system like Medicare.

Without a public option, there is no real reform.

In fact, without the public option, the Obama approach -- and that of compromise-prone Democrats in Congress -- looks increasingly like a step in the wrong direction.

That's because the "reforms" currently under consideration threaten to undermine Medicare and Medicaid -- with radical cost-cutting schemes -- while steering hundreds of billions in federal dollars into the accounts of for-profit insurers and the pharmaceutical industry.

Read it all at The Nation