Fool Me Once Shame On Me, Fool Me Twice...UPDATED

Memeorandum is lit up with "the public option is dead" tripe. Right. As Michelle Malkin says, "distrust and verify." The Left and the Administration have made it clear that they want a public option and if they have to re-package it and put a bright shiny ribbon on it to push the public option through, so be it.

It appears that the latest misnomer is "co-op." By any name, any system that is funded by tax dollars is a public option. Any system directed by the administration is a public option. Any system that does not guarantee tort reform is a public option.

This "trial balloon" is meant to draw the public's attention away from the devil in the details. This is an attempt to quell the noise at town halls and Tea Parties while preserving the public option, albeit in a more subtle (sneaky) form.

The President has hung his hat on the public option. Don't be fooled in to believing that he is willing to walk away from it now.

Update:

Dan Riehl at the Riehl World View isn't buying the idea that the public option is dead:

The media won't watch them. There are no public watchdogs on the prowl, except perhaps for some few politicians on the Right. It's time to be vigilant, to remain engaged. And I wouldn't count on much respite between now and 2010 if we're lucky. That could be out last chance to restore any sanity to our government, again. Unchecked, by 2012, too much may have already slipped beyond the people's control.

And it isn't only Obama we have to be concerned about. The GOP has its governmentalists, too. And they'd like nothing better than to be a part of a Washington, DC that gets to tell everybody just what to do and when. It's time to tamp down that tendency inside a faction of the GOP, too.

Public Option Today, Single Payer Tomorrow?

Via Legal Insurrection:

It seems that every time a liberal politician is confronted by a constituent with the health care horror stories that regularly come out of Canada or Great Britain the answer is always the same, “They are under a single payer system. That’s not what we’re proposing.” Hmm, but isn’t that what many on the left are clamoring for?

Is it possible, that once a “public option” is in place, that the left will use it as a springboard to catapult in to a single payer system? Listen to Barney Frank, and then decide.