If you give away the public option, what do you get?

Ezra Klein argues, correctly I think, that with the current watered down state of the public option in the Senate negotiations it might be better to just give up on it entirely IF in exchange we get something much better. Now, there's still the issue of the House-Senate negotiation-to-come, so one could argue that we want to keep even a weak public option in the Senate bill, for the negotiation with the House. But the bad guys can still filibuster a conference report (the final bill that merges the House and Senate legislation). So if we get a strong, or even a weak, public option out of conference, the same bad Democrats in the Senate will try to torpedo the bill. If we are expected to give up on the public option - and maybe we should, rather than accept crap in its stead - then we should get something huge in return. The problem is, it takes someone demanding something huge in return, in order to get it.