I'm not in the mood to litigate "when did the public option truly die" question, but as the issue is buzzing around it's useful to remind ourselves what the basic choice was:
1) Legislation which slowly moved us to a regulated for-profit utility model of private insurers which would be less abusive than our current system.
2) Legislation which slowly phased out the for-profit model, at least for some base coverage, and to some sort of public insurance system.
We got 1), and while I'm mildly optimistic it will improve things, I'm also depressed that we preserved the absolutely useless role of insurance company skimmers who, it must be said, contribute absolutely nothing of value at a heavy price.
