"..the pitiful plight of Americans so enamored by the ideology of free markets that they are willing to hurt themselves to uphold the ideal"

- Pitiful indeed. That's the reason why more people want to immigrate to America and not to Canada, Sweden, Australia or New Zeland.

"I honestly and earnestly hate to say it but they get what they deserve"

- I can't agree more.

It has been assumed for many weeks by many observers of the process (including members of the other House and Senate committees drafting legislation) that the Senate Finance committee's draft would not include a public option. Don't give up, Matthew! This is not the end of the battle - this bill will be the most conservative of those put forth by the various committees, but it does not supersede them or set the final template for legislation. It must be merged with the Senate HELP bill before a floor vote, and then (assuming the House and Senate both pass their own bills) the real work of hammering out the details will proceed in the House/Senate conference committee. There are many steps in this process, and this is by no means the final one.

Premature handwringing.

I think this kind of defeatism and quitting attitude is part of the Dem's problem.

How about we just get angry and harass these Blue Dog crooks every single day in the August recess?

It's like only the 5th inning and people are moping around and packign their stuff up. Cut it out!

We have been betrayed. It's that simple. I worked hard for Obama.
It was my mistake.

Americans aren't all that enamored of the free market and most of them favor a single payer system of health care. The problem is that our elected officials are whores who worship at the altar of the powerful and wealthy. When the Obama insurance subsidy plan fails it will not be the American people getting what they deserve. It will be the rich and powerful predators getting what they paid for: enough whores in the Senate and House to harm the health and economic future of our people and our nation.

Time for a revolution IMHO. Our economic, political and social leaders in this society are hopelessly corrupt and compromised. It's time for the people to water the tree of liberty and long overdue as far as I'm concerned.

I think we make sure to send a fax to Baucus on single payer day and CC the White House maybe even Reid. I will keep fighting for health care for all no matter what happens in the first round, however many rounds that takes.

Matt Taibbi on the prospects for the bill:

Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with Max Baucus, Bill Nelson, or anyone else. If the Obama administration wanted to pass a real health care bill, they would do what George Bush and Tom DeLay did in the first six-odd years of this decade whenever they wanted to pass some nightmare piece of legislation (ie the Prescription Drug Bill or CAFTA): they would take the recalcitrant legislators blocking their path into a back room at the Capitol, and beat them with rubber hoses until they changed their minds.

The reason a real health-care bill is not going to get passed is simple: because nobody in Washington really wants it. There is insufficient political will to get it done. It doesn’t matter that it’s an urgent national calamity, that it is plainly obvious to anyone with an IQ over 8 that our system could not possibly be worse and needs to be fixed very soon, and that, moreover, the only people opposing a real reform bill are a pitifully small number of executives in the insurance industry who stand to lose the chance for a fifth summer house if this thing passes.

It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters. The situation we have here is an angry and desperate population that at long last has voted in a majority that it believes should be able to pass a health care bill. It expects something to be done. The task of the lawmakers on the Hill, at least as they see things, is to create the appearance of having done something. And that’s what they’re doing. Personally, I think they’re doing a lousy job even of that. I lauded Roddick for playing out the string with heart, and giving a good show. But these Democrats aren’t even pretending to give a shit, not really. I mean, they’re not even willing to give up their vacations.

This whole business, it was a litmus test for whether or not we even have a functioning government. Here we had a political majority in congress and a popular president armed with oodles of political capital and backed by the overwhelming sentiment of perhaps 150 million Americans, and this government could not bring itself to offend ten thousand insurance men in order to pass a bill that addresses an urgent emergency.

Emphasis mine. The first paragraph is crucial, if crudely phrased. If Obama and Rahm wanted this to get done, it would get done.