It's pretty clear that any health care "reform" bill will be a sorry compromise between what the New York Times on Sunday so delicately calls "organized interests."

This is important, because as you may have figured out, we're the only non-organized interest. No one is inviting us to the table to have a reasonable discussion (and no, allowing us to leave comments on the White House website is not a "discussion.") That means the proposals that are most likely to cut costs and improve efficiency are least likely to remain, and the ones most likely to remain are the ones that stick it to us.

For now, that seems inevitable. Although Congress does have its inspirational members, the legislative body is still a wholly-owned subsidiary of the banking and insurance industries. We're more likely to see progress in legislative tweaks after the bill is finally passed:

WASHINGTON — As the health care debate moves to the floor of Congress, most of the serious proposals to fulfill President Obama’s original vow to curb costs have fallen victim to organized interests and parochial politics.

Peter R. Orszag, the White House budget director, says containing costs will be a priority as health care legislation advances.

And now the last two initiatives with real bite that are still in contention — a scaled-back “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health plans and a nonpartisan Medicare budget-cutting commission — are under furious assault.

Most economists’ favorite idea for slowing the growth of health care spending was ending the income tax exemption for employer-paid health insurance to make lower-cost plans more attractive. But that would hurt workers with big benefit plans, and a labor-union lobbying blitz helped kill that idea by the Fourth of July.

Lobbying by doctors, hospitals and other health care providers, meanwhile, dimmed the prospects of various proposals to cut into their incomes, including allowing government negotiation of Medicare drug prices and creating a government insurer with the muscle to lower fee payments.

“The lobbyists are winning,” said Representative Jim Cooper, a conservative Tennessee Democrat who teaches health policy.

Total health care costs in the last 20 years have doubled to about 16 percent of the economy, with no signs of tapering. Along with universal coverage, Mr. Obama has made controlling those costs a central pillar of his health care overhaul, calling the current course “unsustainable.” The effort is a pivotal test of his campaign promise to break the stranglehold of special interests.

In his weekly radio address on Saturday, Mr. Obama applauded the bill set for a vote next week in the Senate Finance Committee. “By attacking waste and fraud within the system,” he said, “it will slow the growth in health care costs, without adding a dime to our deficits.”

In an interview, Peter R. Orszag, the White House budget director and the official most associated with the drive to cut costs, singled out the proposed Medicare commission and the “Cadillac tax” as evidence of progress. “A key priority now,” Mr. Orszag said, “is to make sure cost containment holds up as we move through the legislative process."

Neither element appears in any of the other four health care bills on Capitol Hill, and both face dug-in resistance in the House.

Although the bills contain other measures aimed at medical costs, most of the surviving ones do not antagonize any organized interest. Among them are voluntary efficiency measures like encouraging the coordination of medical records, disseminating information comparing the effectiveness of treatments and various pilot projects.

White House officials argue that in any case it is prudent to start with such tests, and that many could be expanded to more comprehensive programs. But their real impact is hard to gauge, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office assigns them little weight. (The budget office credited the Finance Committee bill with reducing the federal deficit, but how much it will slow the growth of total public and private health spending is another question.)

The tax on gold-plated insurance plans is the last vestige of most economists’ favorite idea, eliminating the tax exemption for employer plans. The finance bill would impose a 40 percent excise tax on insurance plans that cost more than $8,000 a year for an individual or $21,000 for a family.

The bill has aroused the frantic opposition of labor and business lobbyists who appear to have found friends in the Capitol. On Wednesday, 157 House Democrats — a majority of the party — signed a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposing the tax.

“It has no legs in the House,” said Representative Pete Stark, the California Democrat who is chairman of the health subcommittee of the tax-writing panel.

The proposed Medicare commission, aimed at providers instead of consumers, is becoming a case study in the political difficulty of reducing medical payments.

The commission was intended to side-step the interest-group pressure that often stymies Congress. Modeled after the nonpartisan commission for military base closings, it would present a roster of Medicare cuts that Congress could block only with legislation.

But along the way, the White House and the Senate Finance Committee have cut deals for political support with lobbyists that may circumscribe the cost cuts, potentially including the recommendations of the commission.