Key Democrat Throwing the Towel on Public Option for Health Care Reform

According to CNN, Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota there are not enough votes in the Senate to put the public option on the table and "it was futile to continue to "chase that rabbit" due to the lack of 60 Senate votes needed to overcome a filibuster."

"The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for a public option. There never have been," Conrad said on "Fox News Sunday."

His comment signaled a shift in the health care debate, with Obama and senior advisers softening their support for a public option by saying final form of the legislation is less important than the principle of affordable coverage available to all.

The question everybody should have when they attend a town hall meeting from now on is: if everybody is required to have insurance, who will insure that it is affordable?

The normal free market model tends to low ball costs to lure people to join a program hoping to drive other competitors out of the market and then up costs when there is no reasonable viable option to the consumer. I would like any Senator or President Obama to explain how they will prevent that from happening, if there is no public option or watchdog/oversight.

What if private insurers, like they have been alleged and known to do, collude with each other. The government hasn't enacted Taft-Hartley Act in a bazillion years. What tough measures will be in place and who will guard the guard, since many times agencies are stocked with veterans and lobbyists from the industries they are supposed to watchdog.

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