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Now that you’ve had a chance to read every page of yesterday’s CBO estimates of the Senate Finance bill, here’s a roundup of what’s happening in the Washington health-care debate. Today’s familiar theme: The public option.

Like everybody else who’s following the health-care overhaul, we’re waiting for CBO to score the latest version of the Senate Finance Committee bill. In the meantime, here’s a headline number to tide you over: $121 billion.

President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul has a way to go. Once the bill makes it through the Senate Finance Committee, it goes to the full Senate. WSJ’s John Fund tells WSJ’s James Freeman even then, there will be a long road ahead.

The rest is here:  How Democrats Plan to Pass ‘Obama-care’/a>

The Senate Finance Committee rejected an amendment that would have tightened abortion restrictions in the health-care bill. WSJ’s Greg Hitt says despite partisan feuding, the bill may be brought to the floor of the Senate within two weeks.

The rest is here: Abortion Provision in Health Bill Is Defeated/a>

As expected, the Senate Finance Committee just rejected two amendments that would have created a new, government-backed health insurance plan to compete against private insurers. In other words, the public option.

All of the panel’s Republicans and a few Democrats voted against the measures — one, from Jay Rockefeller, went down by a 15-8 vote; another, from Chuck Schumer, lost 13-10.

The Senate Finance Committee keeps wading through that long list of amendments to the Baucus bill, and interesting nuggets keep popping up. The latest to catch our eye: An amendment adopted today that would force pharmacy benefit managers that participate in health-insurance exchanges to share key information with the government.

The amendment is conveniently located on page 129 of this PDF.

The FDA said today that Merck’s diabetes drug Januvia may be associated with pancreatitis, a serious inflammation of the pancreas that can lead to hospitalization and, in rare cases, death. Merck said that the data suggest the drug doesn’t cause pancreatitis.

It took Sen. Max Baucus forever to come out with a proposed health care bill. And from the looks of things, whatever bill finally emerges from the Senate Finance Committee may not bear much resemblance to what Baucus proposed last week.

The ink was hardly dry on today’s health-care bill delivered by Sen. Max Baucus (pictured) when Washington’s budget scorekeepers came up with a new number for the 10-year cost of the measure. But unlike the rash of health overhaul cost estimates lately, this one put a lower figure on the bill’s expected outlays.

Nonprofit hospitals can breathe a sigh of relief that a health-care overhaul proposed by Sen. Max Baucus doesn’t include an excise-tax measure that had been contemplated just a few months ago for hospitals not offering enough charity care.