They sometimes mentioned a public option, but it was never central to either Obama's or Hillary's pitch.
See here for an evaluation of Obama on the issue: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/dec/... It was included in his platform, but as an "also, too" kind of thing. And if you took your evaluation of his position from what he said on the stump, you'd never have known it was in his platform at all.
(I'm omitting Edwards from this discussion because he flamed out so early.)
My recollection is that it was included, but then traded to the relevant industries for their acceptance of the plan we have now. Whether it was always intended as a chip or was a serious part of the plan is open for debate I suppose, but the best chips are ones that are serious, so I'm not sure there's much difference in practice.
Kind of, in that opponents of any bill were joined by some Senators that were closely tied to the insurance industry to threaten to filibuster the bill (which passed the House with a public option) if a public option was included, looking several attempts (both passing the form the House did and putting forward different public mechanisms) to include a public option in the Senate version, and dropping the public option was the only way to secure Senate passage.
See here for an evaluation of Obama on the issue: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/dec/... It was included in his platform, but as an "also, too" kind of thing. And if you took your evaluation of his position from what he said on the stump, you'd never have known it was in his platform at all.
(I'm omitting Edwards from this discussion because he flamed out so early.)