General Discussion

"Unsurprisingly, insurance companies had balked at the idea of a public option, arguing that they would not be able to compete against a government insurance plan that could operate without the pressures of making a profit. Of course, for public option proponents, that was exactly the point: by high-lighting the cost effectiveness of government insurance and exposing the bloated waste and immorality of the private insurance companies, they hoped the public option would pave the way for a single-payer system. It was a clever idea, and one with enough traction that Nancy Pelosi had included it in the House bill. But on the Senate side, we were nowhere close to having sixty votes for a public option.

"I found the whole brouhaha exasperating. 'What is it about sixty votes that folks don't understand?' I groused to my staff. 'Should I tell the thirty million people who can't get covered that they're going to have to wait another ten years because we can't get them a public option?' "

Barack Obama, "A Promised Land"

This has been explained many times. Democrats had sixty votes for about four months and ten days in which to pass anything -- zero Republican votes.