Last week, David noticed a problem with the health care legislation draft from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee (HELP): it was missing the public option. (That's the draft, btw, that the CBO scored that is causing such a fuss.)

David wrote then:

This isn't definitive, but in general I think you want to see the things you want in a bill included in the chairman's mark, not left out for later. If you recall the way the FISA bill went down, you'll see the importance. Yes, you'll have a vote later on including the language you want, but shoehorning a major shift in policy into an existing draft is always a lot harder, both politically and procedurally, than helping it survive a markup if it's in the original draft. With FISA, the dynamics were slightly different, to be sure. There you had two competing versions of a bill from two different committees vying for the right to become the base bill for purposes of floor consideration. But the similarity is that once it was decided the base bill would be the one with retroactive immunity in it, the fight to replace it with the version that dropped immunity was uphill all the way. And although including the public option won't face anything analogous to the 60-vote threshold in the HELP committee, the dynamics of inserting major changes versus preserving the status quo still has some application.

We saw the FISA disaster, are we about to live through it again with health care reform and the public option? One of my contacts, a health care activist who's talked to and been briefed by the committee staff sent this note this morning:

"We're still hearing conflicting things, but there is a very real danger that the HELP committee is considering going ahead without putting a public option in the bill, making it necessary to add the public option in via amendment as opposed to protecting it from being stripped. This would stack the deck against the public option and make it much more likely we couldn't get the votes in committee to add it at all, or would have to weaken the public option to get it passed. Bottom line, going forward without a public option in the bill is like starting the game down by 10 points."

We've seen the Democrats on the HELP committee basically get rolled by Republicans once already today, over the CBO score. Don't let them get rolled again over a public option. It's far less likely to emerge out of the Senate if it's not in the HELP draft. Baucus is already likely to fold under the unrelenting obstructionism of Grassley, so we've got an even more uphill battle to get it in the Finance committee version. It's got to be in this bill, so that the House--which is insisting that no bill will pass without a public option--has something to work with.

Call Sen. Dodd, who is Kennedy's standard-bearer on this one, and tell him a robust public option must be included in the draft that goes to markup: Tel: (202) 224-2823 | Fax: (202) 224-1083. You can also e-mail the committee: help_comments@help.senate.gov. While you're at it, here's the rest of the Democrats on the committee:

Tom Harkin (IA): (202) 224-3254

Barbara A. Mikulski (MD): (202) 224-4654

Jeff Bingaman (NM): (202) 224-5521

Patty Murray (WA: (202) 224-2621

Jack Reed (RI): (202) 224-4642

Bernard Sanders (I) (VT): (202) 224-5141

Sherrod Brown (OH): (202) 224-2315

Robert P. Casey, Jr. (PA): (202) 224-6324

Kay Hagan (NC): (202) 224-6342

Jeff Merkley (OR): (202) 224-3753

Help the HELP committee help all of us, but making them hold the line on the public option. While you're at it, call the White House at (202) 456-1414, or e-mail President Obama.

He has said:

What I am trying to do, and what a public option will help do, is put affordable health care within reach for millions of Americans. And to help ensure that everyone can afford the cost of a health care option in our exchange, we need to provide assistance to families who need it. That way there will be no reason at all for anyone to remain uninsured.

Does he mean it? Will he make it happen with Democrats in the Senate for health care that will reach millions of Americans, or would he really "rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85 percent of what he wants rather than a 100 percent satisfactory bill that passes 52 to 48."

Will he really trade real health care reform for "bipartisanship"?