Health care reform is coming this year...

...but it won't include the public option. I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's just a bridge too far. The private insurers are arguing that a public option will eventually put them out of business. They maintain that they just can't compete with it. Never mind that private insurers exist side-by-side in other industrialized countries that have single-payer systems. Also, isn't competition supposed to be a good thing? But it's the line in the sand that the anti-reformers have drawn. My sense is that Obama and the Democrats are probably using it as a bargaining chip anyway and don't really expect to get it. So the good news is that some form of health care reform will get passed this year. The bad news is that the private insurers will get to live another day. But in any event, reform is coming and it will be an improvement over the current system.