What Digby said:

The plan is vulnerable on a number of fronts (not the least of which is the funding for the Medicaid expansion) and all we heard for months was “don’t worry, once you pass an ‘entitlement’ they’ll never be able to take it away.” And that was nonsense. With the plan taking years to implement, the right having packed the courts for decades and the Republican Party being batshit insane, there was always a very good chance that some element of the plan was going to be struck down. And because it was such a Rube Goldberg mess by the end of it, the result was likely to be the whole thing falling apart. Having something like an optional Medicare buy-in would have been a good back-up just in case. (After all, if they start invalidating Medicare, they know there will be hell to pay.)

All the Very Serious People also told us that the plan would be immediately “improved” and all the problems would be fixed once it was passed, so I suppose they could still add on a Public Option. I was just a teensy bit skeptical that they would even be able to defend the plan as it was, much less “fix” it, and I’m even more skeptical now. But who knows, maybe a miracle will happen.