The compromise between single payer VS doing nothing that was the Public Option in its conception has now become a compromise of the compromised compromise, if you look at what the creator of the Public Option has to say about the Senate version being tossed around:

You Call This a Compromise?

The problem is that the “middle-ground” ideas that are currently flying around aren’t in the middle at all.

They represent abandonment of the public plan idea altogether. One
proposal that is being floated, for example, is the chartering of a
national nonprofit plan, similar to the “cooperatives” that Senator
Kent Conrad has advocated. But the whole point of the public plan is to
create a plan that is up and running quickly and constructed on the
existing infrastructure of Medicare so that it can create competitive
pressure for insurers and serve as a backup for consumers on day one.
In 35 states, after all, the largest private insurer enrolls more than
half of privately insured patients. Many of these plans are nonprofits
already--the problem is that they don’t face a credible alternative.

Another, even stranger idea is to offer the nonprofit plans
available in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) within
the exchange. Since the FEHBP is itself a form of exchange, this
amounts to offering a new set of private plans within a new set of
private plans. How is that going to provide real pressure on private
insurers in a consolidated insurance market in which nonprofit plans
already have a large presence (and often act little differently from
for-profit plans)?

In short, the new compromise proposals are anything but.

Yahoo! Or... Maybe not, eh?