For advocates of a public insurance option, watching the Senate Finance Committee take up the issue on Tuesday had to be a maddening exercise.

The 21-member panel spent more than four hours debating an amendment from West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller that would create a public option and link it to Medicare reimbursement rates—a plan similar to one that House Democrats seem likely to embrace.

The back-and-forth was fairly predictable. Rockefeller and his allies—most notably Chuck Schumer and John Kerry—pointed to the glaring need for competition for private insurance providers, which enjoy virtual monopolies around the country, waste money on overhead (often to weed out “insurance risks”), raise premiums with impunity, and all too often deny badly-needed care for their customers in deference to the bottom-line.

Republicans countered with fear-mongering about “government-run” health care—even after Democrats pointed out that the popular V.A. health system is the very definition of government-run health care and that Medicare (which, in a memorable exchange, Schumer got Republican Chuck Grassley to label “part of the social fabric of America”) is a government-run insurance program.

None of it swayed anyone on the committee, and when the roll was called, G.O.P. members (including Olympia Snowe, the committee’s oft-cited-by-Democrats moderate Republican) stood united in opposition and five Democrats—Arkansas’ Blanche Lincoln, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Bill Nelson of Florida, Delaware’s Tom Carper, and Montana’ Max Baucus (who is also the chairman)—bailed on Rockefeller. The final vote was 15-8 against the amendment.

Then it was time for Schumer’s public option amendment, which was basically identical to Rockefeller’s except that it wouldn’t peg reimbursement rates to Medicare—a step intended to ease worries about the government plan having unfair competitive advantages.

The debate was quicker (Baucus begged his members not to repeat the points they’d already made), but just as frustrating. Republicans kept up their “government-run” attack and even introduced a new angle: Why do we need a public option to keep the insurance companies honest, Jon Kyl and John Cornyn demanded, when we already have state insurance commissioners who are supposed to do this? (So are Kyl and Cornyn, self-proclaimed defenders of the free market, saying they’re O.K. with monopolies as long as someone in the government can intervene to thwart their most egregious practices?)

Schumer’s amendment was again opposed by every Republican, but it did win over two more Democrats: Nelson and Carper. Baucus said he wasn’t necessarily opposed to it, but “I don’t see how a public option gets 60 votes on the floor at this point and for those reasons I will vote against this amendment.” It died on a 13-10 vote.

Drawn out and irritating though the proceedings were, they really don’t mean much in the bigger picture. Like actors in a play, the senators were all basically reading lines that had been written long ago. It was clear before today that both amendments would fail, and there was no surprises in either vote. The Finance Committee will now presumably pass a bill with non-profit co-ops instead of a public option.

But that hardly means the public option is dead. The final Finance bill will then have to be merged with the plan already passed by the Help, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee—which contains a public option similar to the one Schumer proposed. That process will be overseen by Majority Leader Harry Reid. The White House will presumably be involved as well.

That merged bill will then have to clear the Senate—first securing 60 votes to beat a G.O.P. filibuster, and then 51 on final passage. (Unless Reid somehow decides to use the filibuster-bypassing reconciliation process, but this is extremely unlikely).

Then, whatever clears the Senate will have to be reconciled with the House version—which may well contain a Rockefeller-style public option. It is in that House-Senate conference committee, where both sides will have equal weight, that the real action on the public option will take place. Compared to that, Tuesday’s Finance Committee activity is nothing.

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