First let me tell you of my joy. Last weekend, I watched Howard Dean on C-SPAN from Pittsburgh. It was thrilling to hear that thousands of other dedicated progressives were cheering him on since the primary concern on my mind is health care reform. I was heartened to learn that the meetings in Pittsburgh brought together hundreds of other advocates of public option and single payer. I was happy to take even more inspiration from Pam's post yesterday about Howard Dean.

Now, about my devastation. What I want to tell you is about is how my former governor of Kansas and Obama's current secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, broke my heart. And, now, how I will not be able to trust her ever again.

On Sunday, my heart hit the floor with a thud.

I heard HHS Secretary Sebelius soften her language about the need for a public option - on purpose - in an attempt to signal the activists that it was time to back off of public option.

Though she said that public option was not off the table yet, she said state employees in Kansas were given a choice between public and private and it works well, adding that it will prevent monopolies where people only have one insurance choice.

She even suggested, on Sunday, that the Obama administration might be willing to consider nonprofit insurance cooperatives as an alternative to the public option plan.

Had Sebelius been getting access to Obama and trying to talk him into her Kansas plan?

Kathleen Sebelius has stumbled badly during her first time in the national spotlight as Health and Human Services secretary...

The back and forth on a crucial element of health care reform reflects just how badly the Obama administration and his supporters -- including Sebelius -- are handling this entire issue after a few days of criticisms from a minority of angry Americans at town hall meetings.

What a disappointing mess. (Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star)

If cooperatives worked so well in Kansas, why are so many people that I know in Kansas uninsured, going without healthcare or going broke trying to pay their hospital bills? Why are people dying because they have no access to care? Why are we in crisis in the heartland?

Exactly how does Secretary Sebelius think it "works well" in Kansas? Kansas cannot be a model for reform!

I and many thousands of Americans and Kansans disagree with her on that and - can I say - I was sorry at that moment that she was anywhere in Obama's inner circle. She was on OK governor who specialized in compromising with Republicans. That's not the kind of leader we need in health care reform.

She is not an expert, though she must imagine herself to be one. That's scary to me.

Her problem (and now ours) may be that she does not know what she does not know. Are the blind leading the blind in Obama's administration?

It was instantly clear to me that Sebelius had a direction that she wanted to go in, and, it wasn't the way that the majority of Americans citizens wanted her to go. It appeared that she and her boss were willing to throw true health reform under the bus, and for what? For something that Sebelius imagined may have worked in Kansas?

Are you kidding me?

So, well, at least now it appears that Sebelius seems to be backing off a bit, at least with her language. She seems to be walking her support of cooperatives back a little bit. And she should. She was wrong to go that route.

The problem with the non-profit cooperative idea is that - well - we've already done that. Blue Cross Blue Shield began as non-profit cooperatives with special arrangements for write-offs, lowered fees and favored contracts from the government. Here's the problem - we don't need any more Blue Cross Blue Shield organizations. We need something very different, very new. What public option would give us is a citizen sponsored (not private corporation) plan that cuts out the fat of the healthcare expense by not paying the enormous overhead that Blue Cross and other insurance companies pay.

Sebelius was wrong last weekend.

In my opinion, Sebelius played her true hand on Sunday when she described her thoughts about how well cooperatives worked in Kansas. I must admit, from now on, I am likely to be permanently skeptical of her.

Here's the latest clip from earlier today. Her words show her walking back a bit from Sunday's talk.

I'm unconvinced.