Kip Sullivan at pnhp.org had a lengthy blog post that, in part, speaks to this issue.

It is not inevitable that a scrawny "public option" will be strengthened

The argument that any "public option" is better than none has rarely been articulated, but I suspect we will hear it more often as the reality sinks in that the "public option" in the Democrats' bill is a joke. "Public option" advocates who learn for the first time that the "option" in the Democrats' bill will insure few or zero people have only two choices: to abandon the "public option" movement, which is no doubt emotionally difficult to do for those who have invested heavily in the movement, or to continue to work for the Democrats' version of the "public option" and rationalize that choice with the argument that a tiny "public option" can always be improved once it is established.

The problem with this argument is that the "public option" is not your typical government program. The "public option" is not like the space program or the various college loan programs, to take a few examples, all of which can be expanded or contracted as the years go by without seriously threatening the very existence of the program. The "public option" will be a business. And this particular government-run business may never get very big; it may not even survive. If it doesn't get big, or doesn't survive, it won't develop the huge public fan base that protects popular programs like Social Security and Medicare. In fact, the reverse could happen. A miserable early performance may cause Americans to turn against the idea of a Medicare-like program for the non-elderly. Unlike public programs, businesses don't have an indefinite time period to develop a supportive public. Businesses don't automatically take root and go on living forever. The "public option" must prove its ability to survive and undersell the insurance industry quickly. Moreover, the "public option" will be attempting to break into a business that has been consolidating over the last few years. The insurance industry is extraordinarily difficult to crack.

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The Democrats' legislation calls for subsidies to people under a certain income level (probably 300 or 400 percent of the poverty level) so all Americans can afford to obey the proposed law requiring them to buy insurance from either the insurance industry or the "public option." These subsidies will probably amount to a trillion dollars per decade. If the "public option" doesn't survive, or survives but never insures more than a tiny percent of the population, that will mean that all or nearly all of that trillion dollars will go to the insurance industry.

It is not written in stone that creation of the "public option" must go hand in hand with a huge bailout for the insurance industry. After all, one could imagine a scenario in which enrollees in the "public option" are the only ones who get subsidies. That was Hacker's original plan. But Democrats decided early in their bill-writing process that subsidies had to go to both the "public option" and the insurance industry, and Hacker and company did not complain. That decision, plus the Democrats' desire to achieve near-universal coverage, plus the Democrats' decision to create only a tiny "public option," means that if a "public option" is enacted it will be enacted only in conjunction with an enormous insurance industry bailout.

A well-fed insurance industry is bad news for both single-payer and "public option" advocates. An insurance industry strengthened by a trillion dollars per decade of new tax dollars will not only be in a better position to oppose single-payer legislation, it will also be in a stronger position to lobby Congress and the regulators to ensure the "public option" remains stunted.

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To sum up: "Public option" proponents who claim that any "public option" is better than no "public option" because even a skinny little program can be beefed up later are sadly mistaken. A weak "public option" may not survive to be beefed up later, and whether it survives or not, it will serve as fig leaf that will let Congress justify an insurance industry bailout. A strengthened insurance industry is the last thing either the "public option" or the single-payer wing of the universal coverage movement needs. Please say after me: A weak public option is far worse than none at all.

1. After 1980 its seen rightly as moronicly counter-productive

2. A challenger would have to run either hard to Obama's left- making them unlikely to garner more than Kucinich's numbers or Hard to Obama's right, making them a republican, as Moderate Dem Obama is frustrating to progressives at times, but almost impossible to outmanuver politically by anyone with any hope of actually being elected.

They concede, however, that there are some provisions in the legislation that the organization has backed.

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"The AARP speaks out of both sides of their mouth and tells their constituents or their members one thing and do another," Barton said.