Has the "Public Option" Been Thrown Under the Ambulance?

President Obama's health care APB I regret to say I didn't catch. Read reactions from the redoubtable Peter Suderman and the indefatigable Matt Welch.

Can anybody say for sure that the so-called public option is either dead or alive?

I see different readings of the same entrails. Indomitable Bill O'Reilly says it's dead, and (because if you're like me, the term public option seems to mean different things on different days) he offers a useful definition: There will be no United States Insurance Corp. that will pick up some larger portion of the currently uninsured.

Yet speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-California, and was there an H.M.S. Insufferable?) calls the public option "essential," and some opinionaters, such as implacable O'Reilly guest Marc Lamont Hill, say the speech doubled down, rather than punted, on the public option.

Hooz rite?