This is not compromise - this is apostasy

So let me get this straight. The talk in the Senate is to have a 10-member panel with five liberal Democrats and five conservative Democrats talking about how to effectively kill the public option in the Senate health insurance bill and replace it with lowering the minimum age for Medicare by five years or so, and they think this scheme will shut the yaps of progressives across the nation.

Merriam-Webster defines apostasy as "renunciation of a religious faith" or "abandonment of a previous loyalty." We need to remember that the original goal of health insurance reform was to reduce costs, improve access to proper care, and empower the American taxpayer to hold Big Insurance at bay either with single-payer (which Sen. Baucus merely laughed away) or a strong public option that anyone could join and thus keep the insurance companies honest. If any hope of a real public option is traded away for the Medicare compromise, Democrats in the Senate can call it "bipartisanship" and "compromise" all they want, but we already know the proper word to use.

It seems that a growing number of Senate Democrats have lost their faith.

So why should we have faith in a broken reform plan that is designed to fail the average American?

Either fix this problem NOW or kill the bill and start over from scratch.

Start over from Scratch!

And wrong.

Then you really aren't giving anything up to get something. No biggie

We want the public option restored and reinforced, otherwise we will not support health insurance reform. End of story.

And as long as it existed, the bar was continuously lowered while the reform kept support.

If you want it "reinforced" to the point of being useful (having leverage and market impact), you are dreaming. That was never "on the table".