So according to this L.A. Times article, the health insurance got everything it wanted in this healthcare "reform" bill - except the death of the public option. So as relatively small a concession as that is unacceptable to them - which tells you who really owns this country. (Not us.) All the more reason to push your congress critter. Call today!

Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington - As President Obama's push for a healthcare overhaul moves toward its final act, the oft-vilified health insurance industry is on the verge of seeing a plan enacted that largely protects its financial interests.

That achievement, should it stand up in the final legislation, would be the capstone of a sophisticated lobbying and strategic campaign that began even before Obama was elected president.

The specifics of the healthcare legislation are still being hashed out on Capitol Hill, and key details will evolve in the days ahead. Even so, there is broad agreement that the final plan will, for the first time, require Americans to buy health coverage, with taxpayer subsidies for millions who cannot afford it.

For the health insurance industry, that means millions of new paying customers. What's more, there are likely to be no limits on what insurers can charge, while at the same time the plan is expected to limit competition from any new national government insurance plan that lawmakers create.

I mean, really. What's not to like?

These anticipated wins -- from an initiative that has at times been portrayed as doomsday for health insurers -- is the result of a strategy developed by one of Washington's savviest lobbyists, Karen Ignagni. Under Ignagni's leadership, the industry group America's Health Insurance Plans adopted the goal of universal coverage while setting out to shape it in a way that benefited insurers -- a crucial move that aligned their interests with those of other groups, including consumers and hospitals.

Insurers poured campaign donations into the coffers of key sympathetic members of the House and Senate, and loaded up on lobbyists. And when Obama and other Democrats began attacking the industry, insurers made a strategic choice not to walk away from the negotiating table.

"While so many in this town have been playing checkers, Karen has been playing chess," said Mark Merritt, a veteran lobbyist who heads the Pharmaceutical Care Management Assn.

[...] In addition to fighting the public option, insurers that offer Medicare health maintenance organizations are battling more than $100 billion in cuts in federal payments to that program. And they are trying to beat back a move by Democrats to go after the industry's decades-old exemption from antitrust law.

But in Washington, many marvel that lawmakers have not wrung more from an industry that, surveys show, is held in low regard by the public.

"The industry is really in no position to be making demands," said Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster.

And yet, they continue to do so - especially through senators like Olympia Snowe and Kent Conrad. Don't you love it that no matter how much we donate, politicians say they can't support the netroots agenda "because you're not in my district", yet are so very sympathetic to the millions of dollars poured into their states from giant industries like insurance? Looks like our bribes contributions just aren't big enough.

For much of the last three years, industry leaders have been laying the groundwork for this battle. Amid horror stories about insurers dumping sick patients, denying coverage for medical treatment and cherry-picking customers, Ignagni and a few insurance company executives pushed the idea within America's Health Insurance Plans that the industry risked political catastrophe if it did not move proactively.

"They knew they had a very big [public relations] problem, and they knew this day was coming," said Wendell Potter, a Cigna Corp. public relations executive who quit last year. "They knew they had to be perceived as coming to the table with solutions. It was a departure from their previous point of view. But they knew they would be slaughtered if it weren't."

TPM reports that Reid is close to pulling off senatorial support for the public option - and the White House wants Olympia Snowe's trigger option instead.

In other words, the White House wants the plan that won't work, so they can claim it's a bipartisan plan. Or is it that the administration wants a plan that won't really work, and they're using bipartisanship as a cover? Just asking the obvious question, here:

Multiple sources tell TPMDC that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is very close to rounding up 60 members in support of a public option with an opt out clause, and are continuing to push skeptical members. But they also say that the White House is pushing back against the idea, in a bid to retain the support of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME).

"They're skeptical of opt out and are generally deferential to the Snowe strategy that involves the trigger," said one source close to negotiations between the Senate and the White House. "They're certainly not calming moderate's concerns on opt-out."

This new development, which casts the White House as an opponent of all but the most watered down form of public option, is likely to yield backlash from progressives, especially those in the House who have been pushing for a more maximal version of reform.

It also suggests for perhaps the first time that the White House's supposed hands off approach that ostensibly allowed the two chambers in Congress to craft their own bill has been discarded.

High level White House officials have floated the trigger idea a number of times, and it seems they continue to do so, even at this, crucial stage of the health care reform process, when their involvement is greatest. That has senators who support the public option concerned.

UPDATE: Big Tent Democrat has another take. So does Nate Silver.