Many of us conservatives actually like the idea of an insurer of last resort, but that’s not really the way the public option would have worked. It was going to be set at Medicare+10% payment rates to undercut the private sector. Which would be fine if the private sector just couldn’t compete on price. What made is a poison pill is that it would not be allowed to fail. Assurances that it would be funded by premiums only are not very reliable either because there are a lot of government programs that supposedly pay for themselves as long as you don’t use the same accounting methods that the government requires of corporations.
It’s not a very long story. Since Republican opposition was monolithic, the bill that could pass would be whatever Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson would support.