The public option is dying, and President Obama should be implicated in its death.

While he has paid lip service to a public option in health care, Obama has never put his foot down and said he would not sign a bill that did not have it. Nor has he proposed a vigorous public option: Only a small percentage of Americans could buy into the one he proposes.

That’s a shame, since 65 percent of Americans in the latest New York Times/CBS poll favored giving everyone the option to join a government-sponsored health care plan like Medicare.

Such a robust public option would save money systemwide. It would give much-needed competition to the private insurance industry. It would provide a huge relief to the 47 million Americans without health insurance and the 25 million more who are underinsured. And for the millions of Americans who are staying in jobs they hate just for the health insurance, they wouldn’t have to do that any longer.

Still, Obama has been signalling his willingness to let the public option die.

Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, gave a statement in August on CNN that a public option was not “essential” to reform plans. Obama followed Sebelius shortly after with a speech in Colorado in which he described the public option as “not the entirety of health care reform.” He also has called it “just a sliver” of his overall plan.

But it should be more than a sliver. It should be the whole pie — or at least most of it.

If Obama had advocated Medicare for all, that would have saved more money for the health care system, and would have provided quality care for every American. A robust public option, like Medicare for all who want it, would also give every American the choice of coverage: You could choose public insurance, which has proven to be a success with the elderly, or you could opt for the private insurance companies that are notorious for overbilling and undercovering consumers.

There is consistent, strong support for a public option, and it comes after the madness of the summer at the town hall meetings.

Even a big majority of doctors support the public option. In a recent poll by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, 73 percent of doctors from all sections of the country favored it.

Of course, the health insurance companies don’t support a public option because they are making billions of dollars under the current system. And if Obama forces tens of millions of Americans to buy insurance from them, the insurance companies will make even more money.

But Obama should not listen to the insurance companies. He should listen to the doctors — and to the American people, who overwhelmingly want a public option.

Now is the time for him to put his foot down.

Brian Gilmore, a poet and lawyer, lives in Takoma Park, Md. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.