If Harry Reid was hoping to get some help from the White House in getting his Senate colleagues to do the right thing on health reform, he must be disappointed. Reid and Sens. Durbin, Murray and Schumer met with Obama and his team last night to discuss where the Senate stands on merging the Senate’s two reform bills.

The Senators reportedly left the meeting without comment. And instead of an offer to help round up the votes, the White House [anonymous Democrats] reportedly leaked to reporters conflicting statements, one that Obama expressed no preference and another that Obama preferred Olympia Snowe’s trigger. [But see Valerie Jarrett's take from TPM.]

What did Harry think would happen?

All this week the momentum has been building in the Senate for some version of a public option, possibly with an opt-out for states under conditions yet to be determined. By Wednesday, unconfirmed reports had the Senate and even the White House leaning towards having Reid put a public option into the merged bill, which would force its opponents to find 60 votes to take it out. If Reid could pull that off, he’d be the hero, but he’d need help.

The news that Reid might actually do what a clear majority of his colleagues support and an overwhelming majority of Democrats nationally want drew predictable complaints and warnings from the handful of Senators most out of touch with the public interest. After Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Joe Lieberman expressed their expected annoyance, Olympia Snowe stepped on the plan by announcing she would likely vote against cloture to prevent the Senate to vote for a public option. As Maine goes, so leans the Senate’s worst.

Without clear White House help, Harry has a simple choice. He can do what he knows is right and insert a public option into the merged bill and do his best to get it passed. He may or may not win, but either way, he will earn the respect of his colleagues and Democrats everywhere.

He may have to do it without White House help, but it’s the right thing to do. The insurers have told us their incentives will drive them to cherry pick the exchanges; they’ve promised to raise premiums by 110 percent by 2019 and blame it on Snowe’s weakening the mandates. We know the industry is hopelessly concentrated, that effective competition is impossible, even if the Justice Department were finally allowed to begin decades of anti-trust enforcement. No one expects that to happen.

And yesterday, much to his credit, Ezra Klein showed the graph undermining expectations that exchanges alone will promote effective competition. Getting folks to realize that a competitive insurance market outcome was never likely may be Klein’s most important post all year, since most excuses for opposing the public option depended on that delusion.

Only the most obtuse Senators can now deny that consumers will need another choice, a different choice not tied to the same incentive structure that relentlessly drives private insurers to screw the public. We need a strong, viable, national public option, available nationally, from day one. If we’re smart, we’ll link it to Medicare (Medicare “E”?) and save additional tens of billions, not just on lower provider payments (which Pelosi’s House bill will wisely adjust to deal with current inequities) but in avoiding needless administrative duplication. And we’ll need a plan that can expand and provide guaranteed coverage for those the private insurers drive away, if/when they behave exactly as their incentives tell us they will.

Harry Reid can give them that safeguard.

Or he can give up and just give Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins whatever they want. Earlier this year, the Maine Senators demanded that the stimulus be stripped of money that would have allowed states to save tens of thousands of health care and teachers jobs. If that mindset controls health reform, millions of people who would otherwise get insurance won’t get it or won’t be able to afford it, and many of those people will suffer, go bankrupt or face death.

This is not rocket science. It’s a straight moral choice. We have a chance, a small chance, to begin a transformation in how we provide and pay for health care in America. But Harry Reid is being asked to blow that opportunity, to willingly do less than he can. That’s not what leaders do. Leaders don’t blow these opportunities.

The White House doesn’t seem willing or able to lead. It’s up to Harry and his colleagues. And they’d better not let us down.