The Tribune went to a range of sources to give us an impression of whether Baucus is publicly hedging on the public health insurance option. Mostly state-level, this was an interesting, insightful and well balanced report.

An interesting angle is reported here from a local Montana newspaper. If anyone has wondered what Senator Max Baucus, Finance Committee Chair, has been thinking regarding a health care reform bill, this article has some answers. While short on statistics and facts, it is a worthwhile analysis, nevertheless.

The story can be summarized thus: "Baucus says that he supports the public option, but those who really support the public option think he doesn't." Not much of a story.

This is a local Montana-specific story with an unfortuneate title. The closing paragraphs with comments from locally know politicians should be at the beginning of the story. I would have lead with Sabato's analogy and used it in the title. Sabato: "Health care reform is a 10-act play, and you do not write a review of the play until you see the end of all the acts," Sabato said. "We don't know what's going on behind the scenes. (Democrats) do have a plan for a bill, and they have a plan for how they're going to get this done, but we won't know what that is until it's done."

John Adams is a quality reporter who has often taken on the powers in Montana. I would have liked Adams to talk to one more source outside the Democratic Party machine in the state. The head of the labor union, Feaver, was a good source. One more Baucus skeptic might have given a little more balance to the conventional wisdom of Bergren, Elliott and Sabato. The idea that the people of Montana will forget what happened in the Finance Committee is also conventional wisdom that may not work this time around. But it is what Baucus is counting on.

This is one of the few stories I've seen that offers details on the maneuvering against the public option by Democrats and the response by supporters of the public option. Most stories just take politicians like Baucus at their word, this one offers some specific criticism of his actual behavior.