From ABC News:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Huffington Post that she would not have the votes to pass health care reform in the House if it does not include a public option.

At her weekly press conference, Speaker Pelosi also said that the Conrad cooperative proposal would not be seen as an acceptable substitution for a public plan among her Democratic members.

If the Speaker’s comments are taken at face value, then: no public plan option means no health reform will pass the U.S. House.  Or, put another way, if the public plan is killed off, then health care reform dies in the House.

On the Republican side of the U.S. Senate, the Ranking member of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, Senator Grassley defined for ABC NEWS his three red lines for bi-partisan health care reform:

 ”His three red lines: No public option, no employee mandate to either provide insurance or pay a penalty, and nothing that leads to rationing of health care.

“If those three things are taken care of, we can have a bipartisan plan,” Grassley said.