Gov. Howard Dean (D-VT) has argued that you can’t reform the health care system without forcing private insurers to compete with a new public option. “If we only get community rating and guaranteed issue that’s great insurance reform, but that is not health care reform and nobody should mistake it,” Dean explained.

But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has recently indicated that the public plan is just a bargaining chip to “encourage the private health insurance industry to move in the direction it knows it should move toward—namely, health insurance reform, which means eliminating pre-existing conditions, guaranteed issue, modified community rating.”

Today, during an event at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, ThinkProgress caught up with Baucus and asked the senator if Dean was wrong in insisting that a public health plan is essential to achieving a more efficient health care system:

Let’s see what we come up with. I think we can accomplish the objective [Dean] wants without [a public plan]. We can, we’re going to have to work on it. But we may have to have it, [Dean] may be right. Just don’t know yet.

Watch it:

Dean believes that the public plan would improve system efficiency and quality, but Baucus is more interested in using the program as a political tool to bring insurers to the table and keep single payer advocates at the table. The public, however, supports the public option. According to a poll by Lake Research, “73% of voters want everyone to have a choice of private health insurance or a public health insurance plan while only 15% want everyone to have private insurance.”

Conservatives For Patients Rights, the Swift Boat Health Attack Group funded by disgraced Columbia/HCA Healthcare CEO Richard Scott, is out with a new ad attacking Congress for financing health care reform in the budget:

Isn’t it amazing? Folks in Congress were shocked the plan they passed allowed those huge bonuses for AIG. Now some in Congress want to raise taxes and spend $634 billion dollars for the President’s healthcare overhaul without even seeing all the details of his plan. They just never seem to learn. Call Congress today. Tell them not to raise taxes to spend billions messing with your health care without knowing what they’re buying first.

Watch it:

The ad misunderstands the legislative process. The ad attacks Congress for spending money without “seeing all of the details of [Obama's] plan.” But Obama doesn’t write legislation; Congress does. Obama has laid out his priorities for health care reform and has shared his principles with Congressional leaders and the different stakeholders. Moreover, the budget is not the place for policy specifics; it provides a framework for Congress to pay for reform. The Budget will allocate an unspecified amount to a health care reserve fund, allowing Congressional committees of jurisdiction to develop specific bipartisan reform legislation. Anything Congress produces must be — in accordance with Budget Committee instructions — fully paid for within 10 years.

Of course, if detailing the plan could stop the attacks, then Scott would simply click the ‘Plans’ tab on his own group’s website and download Obama’s proposal or Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) 98-page vision for reform.

But the details of the plan won’t matter. The Right will continue to box Obama’s proposal (which actually incorporates the values of competition and choice) into a familiar big-government narrative or attempt to confuse health reform with a Wall Street culture of greed. The goal here is to echo the same message of attack (over and over again) and hope it sticks. Define Obama’s proposal before he can define it himself.