Public Health care option reportedly removed from health care reform - a win for the insurance companies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/10/pelosi-backs-off-public-o_n_387197.html

The public health insurance option died on Thursday, December 10, 2009, after a months-long struggle with Senate parliamentary procedure. The time of death was recorded as 11:12 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Its death had been rumored numerous times over the past year, but the public option repeatedly and defiantly battled back. The Senate's insistence on 60 votes, combined with President Obama's decision not to intervene on its behalf, eventually proved overwhelming.

The public option leaves behind a Medicare buy-in for people aged 55-64, an expansion of Medicaid, a quasi-public option for those under 300 percent of the poverty line and a collection of national private plans managed by the Office of Personnel Management.

The one remaining chance for the public option rested with the House somehow forcing its will on the Senate.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pulled the final plug in a press briefing with reporters Thursday.

Yeah, unless Obama vetos the bill and sends is back demanding a public health care option, it's basically dead.

The kicker in the bill is that all Americans are legally required to have health insurance. The public health care option represented the only real alternative Americans would have, in view of all the insurance plans that we'd be locked into And if it was a viable option, it would provide the insurance companies a clear incentive to provide better health 'services' at lower rates.

The thing is, I suspect the insurance companies know what I known all along - if a public health option were ever to actually become law, and it were viable, I think the majority of Americans would go for it, en masse. We all know that the insurance companies offer bullshit and at ever increasing prices. To these companies, such a thing represents a clear danger to their profit margins, and more importantly the next step to a single-payer health care system. The public health care option is really the critical mass point, and the insurance companies know this. That's why they've fought so hard to have it killed.

I'd say it's not been a good few weeks for Obama, the country and the world -

• The demise of the public health care option
• Delays in dealing with global climate change (lack of action in the Copenhagen conference)
• Pending esclation of violence and bloodshed in Afghanistan ...

All of these things are happening due the wrong decisions being made.