Os - and a place to dump the unprofitably ill. A public plan option does not lead toward single payer, but toward the segregation of patients; with profitable ones in private plans and unprofitable ones in the public plan. Would a "public plan option" at least be a step in the right direction? I am not convinced that it is fair to call the "public plan option" (aka Jacob Hacker's proposal) "a move in the right direction." In the best case scenario this proposal would, I believe, accelerate the trend toward two-tiered care in our country. But we should recognize first that MoveOn and its friends are suggesting scenarios, not backing a specific proposal. The "public plan option," as yet, amounts to no more than talking points, with some therefore ungrounded assertions along the lines of the quotes by Dr. Dean. (Single payer advocates in contrast have been winning support for legislation -- H.R. 676 in the house and now a bill in the Senate, introduced by Senator Sanders.) If these "public plan option" talking points are intended as a wedge for single payer against private insurance, we should see that they are also a wedge for private health insurance against single payer, the program of national health insurance that the large majority have been shown to want in poll after poll. Single payer has been dismissed by Dr. Dean and many other leading Democrats as "not politically feasible." Indeed, the "public option" notion grew out of this very idea