Four out of five House and Senate Committees have now passed health care reform plans that include a public option. But President Obama may be backing off. Jacob Hacker says the congressional plans range from the good to the not-so-good, to the downright ugly. Hacker is the political scientist from Yale who first proposed the public option. As the reform debate heats up and the August recess winds down, We’ll talk with Hacker about how he arrived at his version of the public option, how the idea has changed as its been through political ringer, and what we can expect to see from lawmakers returning to a Capitol Hill without heath care advocate Senator Edward Kennedy.

You can join the conversation about the “public option.” Would you like to see a government run plan that competes with private insurers?