There's an old saying that if you want it done right, do it yourself. This of course assumes, since you've asserted rightness as a criterion, that you know what result you expect. If you haven't a clue, you rely on an expert.
That Americans are essentially "do it yourselfers" is evidenced by the fact that, after having experienced being ruled by a monarch and his corporate hangers-on, the American colonists opted for self-government. Yes, they designated agents to take care of the daily nitty gritty of public affairs on the federal and state level, but the power to govern was retained by the people themselves.
Which makes it a bit hard to understand what Republican public officials mean when they rail against THE GOVERNMENT. If we the people are the government and they are our agents, then it would seem that either our agents are engaged in an insurrection or simply have no clue about what they are supposed to be doing. So, we should probably be looking out for some new agents and, in the mean time, make sure that the competent ones perform as directed.
When it comes to promoting the health and welfare of the nation, it's clear that we need to rely on expert medical personnel, whose expertise is actually relatively easy to assess by the results--i.e. the public opts for good health. So, the only real question is how and when the medical professionals are going to be paid. Shall it be from the public purse, with disbursements supervised by our agents or shall we continue to rely on several more layers of factors, whose contribution to the delivery of the service is nil? Does the public opt for efficiency, as well as good health? That's the question.
For some reason, the Obama administration has been tiptoeing around the phrase Public Option for reasons that aren't entirely clear. Perhaps it's just a matter of having been disoriented by the Republican rejection of the principle of self-government and their apparent antagonism towards public anything. Perhaps it's a reluctance to take the next step and conclude that the opposition to public education, public transportation, public records, public hearings, public health, public welfare isn't simply a preference for private profit centers, but based on a real antagonism towards the public--i.e. that it's basically un-American?
In any event, whenever something's not going right, Americans opt for the Do It Yourself solution. And, when it's a national problem, then the natural entity to address it is the federal agency that's supposed to be in charge. Government agents. What a lovely solution, as long as they're yours. That's what the public option has always been.
Of course, when you consider the rather significant number of people who apparently prefer to be ruled, regardless of how detrimental to their health and that of their neighbors it might be, because they are deathly afraid of doing anything on their own and, ironically, would rather die than go out on a limb, then introducing the phrase public option to refer to a challenge to the health insurance industry's near-monopoly of the disbursement of payments to providers and a large dollop of profit for themselves was sort of grabbing the bull by the horns. It's true that since choice has been turned into a dirty word in conservative parlance, option is definitely preferable. And it has a nice commercial ring. However, putting public up front like that was either gutsy or foolhardy. You can tell that from the conservatives' retreat to synonyms like "socialist" and "fascist" and even "government run" as if the object of their opposition doesn't have anything to do with what the public opts for.
"Reform," by the way, is a non-starter. Conservatives use "reform" like pest exterminators use "control." It means to get rid of, but not entirely; lest there be nothing to target another day. On the other hand, given that definition, it's clear why "insurance reform" is another danger signal to conservatives. If the Democrats were speaking the same lingo as Republicans, it would mean the death knell of the insurance gravy train.