President Obama, in a meeting aimed at winning over liberal House members who have problems with the pending health care bill, pledged to “revisit the public option in the future,” according to a report from Talking Points Memo.

As I noted when Democrats passed the Senate bill, the whole idea all along was to lay a foundation that they could build on over time. That’s why the debate over whether this current bill is a government takeover is misleading. The point is that the bill puts the architecture in place so that it can achieve a government-run health care system over time.

Meanwhile, after coming out of the meeting, Raul Grijalva, a House liberal leader who yesterday said he was leaning against voting for the bill, told TPM that Obama had made a “compelling” argument that failure would compromise the progressive agenda and damage his presidency.