For everyone on the left or right who has ever said "We want the same health care plan congress has" Baucus more or less gets us there. It does it by taking away perks only the rich and/or powerful get instead of giving those perks to us but it does raise money from them to help make the plan revenue neutral and makes it fairer for us all. Instead of paying for 85% of their premiums we taxpayers - congress's employers - will only pay about 70%. Like employers doe for us.

It's never been too late for health care reform. Despite all the sturm and drang from the right nothing has much has changed. We still have enough votes in congress to pass a good bill. 4 out of 5 bills passed so far are pretty good and even Baucus's bill has those provisions that can be incorporated into the final bill to make it better. Support for reform is still overwhelming.

The public option by itself as written in any of the bills won't do much to bring down prices. Too few people are eligible to sign up for it, it will only be a base plan, and it won't open until 2013 anyway. While I want a public option too we need more than that shiny object we're all obsessing on. Like the following:

There are provisions in most of the bills that will outlaw the rotten insurance company practices you cite. But cutting costs by doing away with fee for service on the provider side is very important too and we should push for those to go into effect immediately instead of just setting up demonstrator projects and study groups to examine how to do it.