Max Baucus and the Finance Committee don't know which end is up. They're refusing to include the public option in their version of the bill, claiming all along that they're worried about the cost. Nate Silver, however, points out:
...this particular permutation on health care reform looks an awful lot like the incomplete draft of the HELP Committee's bill that the CBO scored last month, which also lacked an employer mandate and a public option but contained an individual mandate. That bill, the CBO estimated, would cost about $1.0 trillion -- but would only cover a net of about 16 million people. In contrast, the revised version of the HELP Committee's bill, which did include both a public option and an employer mandate, would cost about the same amount but cover a net of 37 million people.
To repeat: the HELP bill with the public option costs the same but covers more than twice as many people.
Baucus, much like the healthcare industry as a whole, is demanding that we pay more and get less in return (among industrialized nations, we pay the most for healthcare, but rank well below other nations in terms of care, life expectancy, infant mortality, etc). Clearly the Baucus shills are trying to pull a fast one here in order to protect their healthcare lobby mafia dons.