Well, that didn’t take long. The same day that Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid announced that they “would support any provision that increases competition and accessibility for health insurance – whether or not it is the public option favored by most Democrats” the chief lobbyist for UnitedHealth, Steve Elmendorf, sent an email blast inviting people to a $5,000/PAC or $2400/individual fundraiser in his home for Nancy Pelosi.

On Wednesday, NYCEve and I delivered over 63,000 petition signatures of support to Rep. Raul Grijalva and Rep. Keith Ellison who are fighting to organize progressive members of the House to stand strong on a public option.

When the Nevada public learns that he’s personally responsible for including a $3800 fine for those who refuse to pay annual tribute to Blue Cross, how will his poll numbers fare?

Blue Dog Mike Ross presciently submitted virtually the same co-op plan in a July 31 amendment that finally emerged this week in Max Baucus’s Senate plan. But since it now looks like Pelosi is on board with co-ops, that means the Blue Dogs aren’t going to have to take the hit.

Is this a great country or what?

There really doesn’t seem to be any limit to what the administration will do to pass Rahm Emanuel’s neoliberal giveaway to the insurance industry. The “author” of the plan released by Baucus (and apparently by Mike Ross) is a former VP of Wellpoint. Now AHIP is boasting about their role in crafting it:

Congresswoman Maxine Waters makes clear she wishes the President had gone further last night in endorsing the public option. She re-iterates that Obama wants to hear other, better ideas if anyone has any, but does not think there are better ideas than Public Option

Yvette Clarke and John Conyers move from “only with robust” to “took the pledge,” and Betty Sutton is now in “robust.” Putting Sam Farr and Michael Capuano on probation.

Obama says he will include a public option in his health care plan, but stipulates that co-ops or triggers could satisfy his definition. But 179 members of Congress signed on to HCAN’s health care principles, which explictly define a “public option” as not co-ops or triggers. It’s not going to be easy to walk that one back.

The deals they have negotiated with health care industry stakeholders do not include a public plan, they don’t believe they can back out of them without triggering a rush of lobbyist money to GOP coffers. At some point there will be a day of reckoning when the public understands that the public option is gone. The White House wants to stop their opponents — and let’s face it, progressives who are insisting on the inclusion of a public plan are at this point their opponents — from being able to exploit that gap. Because every day that goes by the base gets more and more wedded to the promise of a public plan, encouraged by the positive rhetoric of the President himself. And it becomes that much harder for the White House to extract itself from the double bind they have created without paying a huge political price.

[Ed. note: FDL continues its liveblogging of the president's address in the comments below.] They have released more of the President’s prepared comments from tonight, including those on a public option: The insurance reforms that I’ve already mentioned would do just that. But an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is [...]