COVERAGE: The Public Plan. Again. Still.

The public plan option, in the Senate at least, is beginning to remind us of one of those really really convoluted word problems back in sixth grade math.

"If there are 60 Democratic senators, and 50-something (maybe) back the public plan and none really want to kill health care reform but 15 want to make the playing field more level and four want to leave it to the states, and two are named Nelson and twenty are up for re-election and 9 come from red states... and one is named Reid" how many cookies did Johnny eat?

And would Johnny have eaten all those cookies if he had better primary care?

The Washington Post said the Senate Finance votes were "crippling" to the public plan, the NY Times called it a "setback" to the President (who wants a public plan but has indicated he may not insist on one), while the Wall Street Journal said it's "all but dead." USA today said it was "on a ventilator" (and we can think of one former Alaska governor who would eagerly pull that plug) "Shelved for the moment," quoted the Boston Globe. "A blow to advocates," said the LA Times.

But Sen.Tom Harkin, whose HELP committee bill does have a public option, said: "We have the votes," (apparently assuming that the Democrats can find a procedural way of getting 60 votes to keep the process alive, but only 51 for the public plan) No we don't, says Finance Chairman Max Baucus.

Sen. Olympia Snowe has yet to offer her trigger amendment -- and as Len Nichols has argued, a carefully-designed trigger could work in states that woefully lack competition. Senators Tom Carper and Maria Cantwell are each working on alternatives to create some kind of compromise   -- Carper by allowing states to create their own public entity, Cantwell by having some kind of state-insurer affordable basic health plan for the uninsured.

So Johnny may not be done with his cookies.

And we haven't even mentioned the House...