Prez appears to be allowing for lots of wiggle room on whether the health care package should provide some sort of public-insurance program, the most controversial (and some would argue least important) facet of any overhaul. As he has hinted in several days, Obama prefers the public option, but won't insist on it. From the NYT:

In one indicator of the complexities of health care politics, the more liberal House is considered unlikely to pass a bill without a public option. The White House, which has favored a public option, has eased off recently in signaling that a public option is not a deal-breaker, as the White House officials’ comments on Wednesday afternoon made clear.

WSJ reports that the White House is setting the size of a health-insurance plan at $900 billion over 10 years, smaller than the $1 trillion being bandied about. NYT has speech on its main page, but be warned: It’ll be a while.