Only in the nation’s capitol could people pushing Obamacare keep a straight face while claiming that a new health insurance operation to be run by the same government agency that manages the federal bureaucracy is actually a private program. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, hoping to mollify the liberal wing of his party, insists that it’s still a “public option,” but everybody else on the Democratic side seems to think the public option has been replaced by this new “private” option. Thus, Reuters News Agency reported that “Democratic Senate sources said the substitute would create a non-profit plan operated by private insurers but administered by the Office of Personnel Management, which supervises health coverage for federal workers.” The OPM runs the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, but that is only part of its duties in managing the federal government’s 2 million-plus career civil service workers.

Call it what they will, Reid and his fellow Obamacrats are still doing what they’ve been doing for months, seeking 60 Senate votes for a trillion-dollar federal takeover of the nation’s health care system. First, it was the banking and automotive industries disappearing into Leviathan’s gaping maw; now the health care industry, accounting for one-sixth of the private economy, is about to become a ward of the government, too. If they succeed, Reid and the Obamacrats will turn the day-to-day operation of the world’s best health care system over to the same bumbling cast of characters who managed the TARP bailout for pinstriped thieves on Wall Street, the mortgage foreclosure crisis birthed by ACORN’s government-backed banking industry blackmail, and the Cash-for-Clunkers debacle. Sleep tight tonight, America, because Barack, Harry and Nancy are taking good care of you.