(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN, I-CONN.: If it still has a created government-run health insurance proposal in it toward the end, I will do what I really don't want to do, but I'll do it because I think it is the best thing it for our country and our future, and that is I will join the filibuster to stop that bill from passing the Senate.

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER, D-N.Y.: More senators care about the question of affordability, and for these senators, the public option has become an answer.

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BRET BAIER, HOST: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has not shared any details of his health care reform bill, even with Democrats, but it does include this public option, the government-run health insurance option. He is waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to determine what exactly it will cost and whether it adds to the deficit.

But he is doing head-counting right now, and judging by our counting of the counting, it's not going too well.

Let's bring in our panel, Steve Hayes, senior writer for The Weekly Standard, A.B. Stoddard, associate editor of The Hill, and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.

A.B., do you get a sense that along with Lieberman, that there are other conservative Democrats, moderates, who are having increasing problems with the way this is being rolled out and what's in this bill?

A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, THE HILL: They don't know what's in the bill, and that's why he can't count heads. Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska, the former governor and also a former insurance commissioner, does not want to signal any kind of support or willingness to be onboard until he reads the bill. He doesn't know what the opt-out provision really means.

I think there is concern from Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and some concern from Senator Mary Landrieu in Louisiana. If you count it up, there is just too many to say that he is even close if you combine them with Lieberman.

The thing is, for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, this was just an easy way to get the left off his back. It moves the train out of the station and it gets the Move On off his back. He is in a tough reelection in Nevada. He was under incredible pressure from the left. And this way he literally cannot lose for trying.

It probably won't pass the Senate. He can always crawl back to Olympia Snowe, Senator from Maine, the Republican who was on board for a triggered public option, and try to go with that.

But this isn't looking viable.

BAIER: Steve, it seems like this is setting up - nobody really knows what this opt-out means, that states could opt out of the public option, the government-run option.

Judd Gregg, the senator from New Hampshire, said that is like telling a kid he can opt out of his allowance. What state is going to opt out if the federal government is paying?

STEVE HAYES, SENIOR WRITER, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: Right. And Judd Gregg is very getting good at these quips. Since he didn't take a position in the Obama administration, he is now the most quotable senator in opposition to Obama policies.

I think that is exactly right. The fact remains we don't know what's in the plan. I suspect, and it is just a suspicion, that Harry Reid is teeing this up so he can shift it to a trigger public option and call it a compromise and say Olympia Snowe is back in, we can get the other moderate Democrats to potentially come on board. The CBO is scoring that as well.

I suspect that's where he's going, but I don't think it solves the fundamental problem, though, that Democrats right now as a party on healthcare, everybody is mad at everybody else. It is amazing. The progressives are not happy with Nancy Pelosi and leadership. The moderates are not happy with Harry Reid or with Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi and Reid, I'm told, have had some very bitter disputes over the past few days about how exactly to proceed, what the timeline is going to be. The House is now going to be first, the Senate much, much later.

The Democratic Party seems like it's in disarray on this, the signature domestic policy item of the president.

BAIER: Speaking of the House, they may actually roll out their bill even though the Congressional Budget Office will not have dropped its numbers on that bill as of yet, but it may all happen tomorrow. We're waiting on confirmation on that.

Charles, it's interesting how this is playing out.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, it's astonishing that people are talking about restructuring a sixth of the American economy and don't even have a bill, don't even have a scoring, don't even know what opting in and opting out means.

And here we are at a point where the president has said weeks ago that the time to debate is over. Well, how can you debate if you don't know what the plan is and what's in the plan and what it's going to cost?

I think the Reid gambit is about internal divided politics, about staying alive, appeasing his left. The best he can hope is that if he loses Lieberman on the public option, which he will, and he somehow holds all the other Democrats, then he goes to Olympia Snowe, he puts in a trigger which will be extremely weak, which means it will be triggered if it rains once in March, and then he gets the public option.

I think that's a three cushion shot in pool, but it's his hope. But I think in the end he doesn't really care. All he wants is the political cover of having proposed it.

BAIER: And you still believe that the public option, the government- run option is the camel's nose under the tent towards what the big picture is towards single payer? That's what you believe?

KRAUTHAMMER: It is what the left has said openly. It is the royal road to government-controlled healthcare. It is the only way to get there in a country that would resist it if you offered it openly and honestly.

BAIER: A.B., do you see this coming to a head before the end of the year? It seems like we're running out of legislative days as you look at both the Senate and the House calendar and how this is all going to come together.

STODDARD: We are. And the other thing that people are not talking about because the Democrats are trying to really create a united front and trying to create this idea of momentum and consensus, there is a real affordability question.

The House pay for it, the way they plan to pay for this, is unacceptable to the Senate, the Senate plan to pay for it unacceptable to the House.

And there is real concern that if you mandate the purchase of insurance, American families will be hit by a new tax and not able to come into the system without a heavy burden. And that is going to be something that is going to hit them so hard politically, they don't want to pass that either.

So how they resolve not only the abortion (ph) question, the public option question, but this question of whether or not people can really afford the overhaul is so fundamental and it is still hanging out there.