Honesty From The Left On The “Public Option”

From the lefty (they like to call themselves “progressive,” but I call ’em as I see ’em) American Prospect comes this article on the “public option.” Here’s a sample (bold emphasis in original, red emphasis mine):

Following Edwards‘ lead, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton picked up on the public option compromise. So what we have is Jacob Hacker’s policy idea, but largely Hickey and Health Care for America Now’s political strategy. It was a real high-wire act — to convince the single-payer advocates, who were the only engaged health care constituency on the left, that they could live with the public option as a kind of stealth single-payer, thus transferring their energy and enthusiasm to this alternative. It had a very positive political effect: It got all the candidates except Kucinich onto basically the same health reform structure, unlike in 1992, when every Democrat had his or her own gimmick. And the public option/insurance exchange structure was ambitious.

Read the whole thing. Really.