Mark McClellan has it right. The only hope for gaining the support of Republicans is to make the government option “look like another private sector choice, and then what would be the point?”

This study supports the findings of other surveys that confirm that almost all physicians want reform of our current health care system, but they remain divided over whether or not we should replace the private insurance system with a government-run, taxpayer-financed program.

T.R. Reid had hosted FRONTLINE’s “Sick Around the World,” an important documentary describing successful health programs in several other nations that provide care for everyone at a fraction of the costs of our fragmented, inefficient health care system that leaves so many out.

We were looking forward to T.R. Reid’s sequel, “Sick Around America,” describing the problems with our private insurance system. Many of us were disappointed with the format of the program, believing that they missed a great opportunity to educate the nation on several health policies that would work well for all of us. Thus it was no surprise to us that T.R. Reid was not mentioned during the program, nor in the credits.

Much has already been written about the wisdom, or lack thereof, of health savings accounts (HSAs) and the high-deductible health plans that are linked with them. By design, they benefit higher-income individuals who are able to take advantage of the regressive tax policies, and who remain healthy, allowing the savings to accumulate for use in their retirement years. But they don’t work for individuals with modest incomes who have significant health care needs.

The health care financing systems in other nations are designed to assist patients in paying for their health care. Computerized searches of personal drug use as described in this article is yet one more example of how our private insurance industry adopts policies that are designed to avoid paying for the patients’ health care.

This report, “Health Reform Dialogue,” contains a few modest but obvious recommendations that any reasonable reform effort must include. Much more important is that the primary theme of this report, as exemplified by the sampling of recommendations listed above, is that we should continue with the status quo, dumping more of our dollars into our dysfunctional, wasteful, inefficient, fragmented system of financing health care.

At a rare time in our history when comprehensive reform may become a reality, it is important that the single payer model be represented in the legislative process. The House already has Rep. John Conyers’ H.R.676 and Rep. Jim McDermott’s H.R.1200, and now the Senate has Sen. Bernie Sanders’ S.703.

The option to purchase a public plan within a market of private health insurance plans would merely provide one more player in our inefficient, dysfunctional, fragmented, multi-payer system of financing health care, that is if the public option even survives the political process. It would leave in place the deficiencies that have resulted in very high costs with the poorest health care value of all nations (i.e., overpriced mediocrity in health care).

Doing eligibility audits of dependents covered by employer-sponsored plans is yet one more example wherein our current dysfunctional system of financing health care actually promotes administrative waste. A rational system uses administrative services efficiently to pay for the health care that patients need. In the United States, much of the administrative cost of health care financing is due to efforts to avoid paying for health care.

Perhaps the surest sign of trouble for the proposal to offer a public Medicare-like plan to compete with private insurance plans is the commitment of Finance Chairman Max Baucus that reform will be bipartisan along with the adamant opposition of a public option by Ranking Member Charles Grassley. Having discarded other public insurance proposals such as single payer, even before the negotiations began, the competing Medicare-like option is standing alone as the obvious trade-away for achieving political consensus.