Robust Debate

We keep hearing the term 'Robust Public Option' in the national debate over health care, but I'd like to know just what the hell robust actually means here.  According to Merriam-Webster, Robust means something is capable of performing without failure under a wide range of conditions.  Therefore, as long as the public option works well and doesn't immediately or eventually sink out health care system, it then should qualify as robust, right?

Look, I feel as if the debate over the public option has gone beyond beating a dead horse at this point.  We've begun to slaughter this horse.  Yet, this debate hasn't ended; in fact it isn't even close to over.  We've gotten to a point where the Barack Obama has been accused of working against the Harry Reid's effort to get the strongest version of the public option passed.  This is bordering on insanity people.  Barack Obama is not Michael Steele; he's not the cow on the train tracks preparing to be annihilated.  He's clearly working for the public option, since it was actually his idea to begin with.

At least we've come to a situation where a public option is all but inevitable, which is in itself a remarkable feat after the debacle of the August recess.  According to the Washington Post,

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) sought support Friday for expansive versions of the public option as they prepared to send reform legislation to the Senate and House floors. Their goal is to pass bills with similar versions of the public insurance option so that final talks between the two chambers can focus on other issues that could prove more difficult to resolve.

On Friday, congressional leaders marveled at how quickly the landscape has changed. "This is an exact quote: 'Off the table,' " House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (S.C.) said, recalling the headlines earlier this month when the Senate Finance Committee rejected two versions of the public option in its reform bill.

Clyburn said the debate is no longer whether to include a public option, but "whether or not we will get this form of a public option or that form of a public option." 

We're now unlikely to be entrenched in a nightmare scenario in which the public option is stuck in legislative limbo.  The votes will be there.  The public option will pass.  Who really gives a damn how robust it is, when the actual point of a public option will be accomplished regardless: we will be offering near universal coverage while bringing down health care costs.  We're so close to the finish line.  While the GOP has continued to be irresponsible, the Democrats need to step up to the plate and pass a bill before January.  That would truly be robust behavior.