'Public Option' Gets a New Name -- It's the 'Consumer Option' Now

If it quacks like a duck . . .

In an appearance at a Florida senior center on Monday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to government-run health insurance as "the consumer option." Then Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who appeared alongside Pelosi, used the term "competitive option."

Apparently, the "public option" is sooooo last week.

What's in a name? A lot, it seems, so the lawmakers are rebranding it in an effort to get it past any lingering doubts among the public, consumers and competitors.

Pelosi says "public option" has been misrepresented and creates the impression that taxpayers will foot the bill for health care. Wasserman Schultz says she expects the speaker to give the new wording a test drive when she returns to Washington.

But critics say rebranding the "public option" won't work.

"A lemon is a lemon. You can call it an orange or an apple," Republican strategist and pollster Frank Luntz told Fox News.

"Now she's realized that the so-called public option ... is losing support on a daily basis, and so she's trying to change the language behind it. The problem is the American people really don't want Washington running their health care," he said.

Arizona Sen. John McCain also criticized Pelosi's effort to rebrand the "public option," saying, "You want to call it consumer option, you want to call it banana option, it's still a government takeover of the health care system in America."

"You can change the name, but you can't change people's perception of a brand that has been damaged," said John Tantillo, president of Marketing Department of America.

But efforts to rename sweeping overhaul policies are not unprecedented.

Remember "Social Insurance"? That program, designed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935 as one of several anti-poverty programs designed to alleviate the impact of the Great Depression, underwent a rebranding to make it more palatable.

You may know it by a different name: Social Security.

And Medicare, the single-payer health care system for people aged 65 and over, was also dubbed "social insurance" or "medical insurance" before it acquired its current name.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.