Health-care wonks worth their salt will tell you that the big issue in the current effort to reform our abysmal health-care system is cost control. They say if we don't do something to rein in the spiraling cost of health-care, it will eventually bankrupt us all. This is also a key argument made by advocates of what has become the ideological fulcrum of the health-care reform debate: the public option. Those who want to give Americans the choice of a government insurance plan have talked a lot about the public option's potential to save money over private coverage.

In December 2007, with the first contest of the 2008 primaries approaching, Prospect Executive Editor Mark Schmitt wrote what would become one of the most influential articles of the campaign. In the piece, Schmitt contended that voters were witnessing a "theory of change" primary, in which Democratic voters were making a choice between three competing theories about how you get things done in Washington. Hillary Clinton argued that it was about being prepared and working hard; John Edwards argued that it was about confrontation; and Barack Obama contended that he could bring all parties to the table and achieve reform by treating everyone as though they were operating in good faith.