I've said it a million times, but ultimately HCR has to be a popular bill. Not popular in a poll-tested optics kind of way, but popular in the sense that people who feel like they're getting screwed by their insurance companies find that the changes help them, and significant numbers of people who didn't have decent affordable insurance will actually get that. The public option is a way to achieve both that and cost controls. Popular and good policy! Only the skimmers and their minions in Washington don't like it.
Pass it.