Tax payers pay for congress's healthcare, so we are entitled to the same healthcare plan.

I’ve been a little under the weather this month, and nothing gets a guy angrier at the American medical system than having to use it. And, right off, I’ll tell you, I have pretty good insurance. I didn’t used to, and I paid a high price for that mistake, so now I send off a hefty part of my monthly income for a private plan that comes very close to qualifying as a “Cadillac plan” under the merged Senate health care reform bill. Yet, even with this deluxe package—one that increased in price some 17% this year—I have paid a couple extra hundred bucks in co-pays and prescriptions in the last few weeks.

That is a quick recap of my personal ride on the cost curve—the cost curve President Obama and his health economists economist (singular) insist is going to get bent by the reform package we are now all supposed to get behind, pass, and cheer as if it is the magic inevitable we’d been working toward all along. But, of course, the things that have made my maladies so pricey—insurance and pharmaceuticals—are, by all accounts, going to be spared the rod of reform.

There is no drug re-importation, no direct drug price negotiation, no ban on “pay for delay,” and no way to accelerate generic competition for expensive classes of biologics. None of that is in the Senate bill that is now to be swallowed whole by the House, and it is all but certain that none of the PhRMA deal-busting provisions I just listed will make it into the reconciliation “fix” that is supposed to follow. The fact that a year’s worth of wrangling has been wasted trying to avoid upsetting Rahm and Barack’s BFFs in the Pharmaceutical lobby is now barely a blip on the radar.

Still at issue, though in a Kafkaesque way, is the other half of the equation: meaningful competition for the private insurance industry in the form of a viable public option. A majority of House members voted for it last year, Bernie Sanders claims he has a majority of votes for it in the Senate, and the President campaigned on its behalf throughout 2008, and yet, when all the votes are taken, who here is willing to bet that we will get a public option as part of comprehensive health care reform?

Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin claims he will whip for a public option in the Senate—if the House sends him one. Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she supports a public option, and would put it in the House sidecar if only the Senate had the votes to pass it. And, of course, President Obama says he would prefer a public option, but he doesn’t think it could get the votes.

But, behind the scenes, Durbin is actively whipping against a public option amendment coming to the floor; Pelosi will not allow the public option an up-or-down vote in the House; and, Obama has made a series of campaign-style appearances, and mobilized his minions, all to underscore that it is “time” (as opposed to year ago, when it was, I guess, not time) to pass a health care bill. . . and that would be the Senate bill. . . and, you know, whatever.

For some reason, a program that enjoys the support of overwhelming majorities of Democrats, independents, or Americans as a whole—slice it any way you like—has become synonymous with “hot potato.” No one wants to be the one who has to take the blame for killing it—but, bizarrely, absurdly, maddeningly, no one wants to be the one that gets the credit for passing it.