Is the public option gaining momentum?

The hotly debated "public option"of health care reform plans being considered by Congress seems to be getting revived. The mood is changing both with the public and inside the halls of Congress, where Tuesday night House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told fellow Democrats that she's close to securing the 218 votes she needs to pass the plan.

The public option is essentially a health insurance plan funded by taxpayer money. Citizens can take advantage if they don't have private health insurance, or as an option for their insurance provider. The public option has been fiercely advocated by liberal pundits and politicians as critical to true reform. Opposing and conservative critics lambast it as a behemoth socialist program that would bankrupt the government and destroy the American health care system.

Raucous health care reform debates that took place in town hall meetings across the country over the past few months targeted the public option and put its progress in doubt. But these developments from just this week may be changing the game:

Public opinion polls show enhanced favorability ratings

A poll released Tuesday showed that 57% of Americans now support "having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans." This comes on the heels of a Pew Research poll conducted earlier this month, which found that 55% of Americans favored a "government health insurance plan to compete with private plans." Conversely, a July Rasmussen poll found that just 35% of Americans supported "the creation of a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurers," and an August poll conducted by NBC found support from only 43% of those polled.

CBO announces public option plan would reduce deficit

A preliminary report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan federal agency that analyzes budgets for Congress, stated that the public-option health care bill proposed by the House Democrats would cost $871 billion over 10 years and actually reduce the federal budget deficit. President Obama had previously stated that any health care reform proposal should cost less than $900 billion over 10 years.

Congressional Democrats pushing for a public option vote

Perhaps fueled by the swing in public opinion and the favorable budget report by the CBO, Democrats in the House and in the Senate are pushing hard for a vote on a plan that includes a public option, perhaps as early as this week. In addition to Nancy Pelosi signaling that she's pushing for a House vote as support for the plan grows, the Washington Post reported today that liberals in the Senate, encouraged by signs that moderate senators are now warming to the public option, are pushing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to "revive a proposed government insurance plan before health-care reform legislation reaches the Senate floor." Two previous versions of the public option were rejected by the Senate Finance Committee, reportedly because they posed "too great a threat" to the American health insurance industry. The Post report goes on to say that a team of Senate negotiators is currently hard at work crafting a new proposal that adds a public option into a plan already passed by the Senate Finance Committee.

Star power fuels support

A few weeks ago, a satirical pro-health-insurance-company public service announcement starring Will Ferrell, Jon Hamm, Olivia Wilde, Donald Faison, and a host of other celebrities went viral. The ad, which some thought was the most effective pro-health-care-reform piece to emerge during the entire debate, attracted millions of views within days of hitting the Internet. This week, MoveOn.org unveiled a new television ad championing the public option starring actress Heather Graham. The ad, which features a fit-looking Graham as the embodiment of the public option running a race against a group of unfit-looking people representing health insurance companies, is part of a campaign by the liberal activist group to force the insurance companies to face "real competition," something they say is as "American as apple pie."

-- Brett Michael Dykes is a contributor to the Yahoo! News Blog