CRITICAL CONDITION: Public Option, it's back

ST. PETERSBURG, FL -- As a primary care physician, Dr. Fadi Saba sees as many as 30 patients a day at his St. Petersburg office.  He says some are on Medicaid, some are on Medicare, and then there are the patients who are stuck in the middle.

"These are the patients who are struggling between two or three jobs to survive and some of them are losing their jobs and with that they are losing their health care coverage," he says.

Dr. Saba says many of those patients would benefit from a public option in health care, but he's not sure the one proposed today will work.

"We're basically covering more people with the same number of providers for the same amount of money," Dr. Saba says.

That's how he interprets the public option that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says is back in the Senate bill. The public option will create a non-profit government run insurance plan and Reid's would give states the ability to opt out.

"There’s lots of pressure for a public option from the left, says USF political analyst Dr. Susan MacManus. She says while the public option is a must for some Democrats, it's also a big bargaining chip.

"It’s like the budget game. You start out asking for twice as much as you actually hope to get," she says.

Doctor Saba isn't convinced this public option will survive the politics. But he does hope for health care reform, that cuts what he calls the wasteful spending and improving patient care.