The White House wants to make something perfectly clear: The public option is still on the health care negotiating table.

"The goal is choice and competition" among health insurance plans, spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters this morning."The preference is the public option."

Gibbs denounced reports that the administration may drop its support for a publicly funded insurance option because of intense opposition. He attributed the reports to a media "overreaction" after the comment by Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that a public option is not "essential" to a health care plan.

Obama himself stoked commentary with his statement Saturday that "the public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform."

Whether the White House was sending signals or not, liberal Democrats made their own position very clear: The public option is essential to any health care plan designed to cover all Americans.

Yet Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., says there aren't the votes for it in the Senate. Republicans and some conservative Democrats describe the public option as a gateway to a government-run, single-payer plan.

Bottom line: It's tough to negotiate a complex piece of legislation in public. The administration obviously doesn't want to deal through the media or drop a key provision before Congress returns from August recess.

To be continued.

(Posted by David Jackson; photo by Alex Brandon, AP)

