I think I am still safe on my high moral ground thinking that any improvement in national health care is impossible, that our best course is to invent it here on our hardpan. However this position is continually being undermined by well-regarded progressives and pundits who insist, pound even, on incorporation of a public option. For example, an otherwise excellent post in today's firedoglake  by Scarecrow says the PO could eventually force the insurance industry out of healthcare.

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/author/scarecrow

I say the PO, enacted, would fail. Quel doleur! I am shattered. I am made out to be the bowel movement of defeat in the punchbowl of progress. My head spins over the behind trying to figure how anybody could think the industry will let a few dreamers turn off the golden spigot. Up is down, black is white, good people are wrong. People, people, the public option is, was, and will be a red herring that will shoehorn the single payer freight off the rails of progress. Another way to put it is a question. How do you sort progressives into those who understand that we no longer have a government from those who think we do?