What these fourteen senators are now proposing with the public option is health care reform's phoenix. Or, to put it another way, the final chapter on the public option has yet to be written.

Regardless of the outcome, health care reform today comes down to four simple, words: accessibility, affordability, choice, and competition. For good measure, there is also perhaps a fifth word: right,

At the end of the day, the way that most Americans will measure reform is by asking, "Do I have good health care that I can afford?"

Instead of asking families to pay huge portions of their income for health care costs, Blue Dogs should start by asking to roll back the tax breaks the wealthy got under George Bush.

While it once seemed like our biggest battle was over whether we are going to get a strong public health insurance option as part of reform, that question has now joined a host of others in the debate.