Although prospects of a "public option" health care reform plan passing Congress are looking dimmer, most people who crammed into a Monday night forum in Santa Fe applauded when Northern New Mexico's congressman said he favors the idea, which the U.S. House of Representatives passed.

Nearly 200 people crammed into the Unitarian Universalist church, and about the same number were turned away at the door by order of the fire marshal. U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., and other panelists agreed to meet with the overflow crowd at a second session, attended by about 100 people.

Although Luján is steadfast in backing the public option — by which Americans would be able to purchase health insurance from a nonprofit company established by the government if they didn't like plans offered by private companies — the provision has run into trouble in the Senate. And over the weekend, the White House signaled that it might be backing away from the public option provision.

Unlike the raucous town-hall meetings disrupted by loud and angry protesters that have made national headlines in recent weeks, Monday's event was relatively sedate.

Perhaps one reason for this was that participants didn't directly question the panelists. Instead, they wrote out their questions in advance to be read by a moderator.

A large majority of those present at the first discussion applauded Luján when he stressed several times that he was in favor of a public option and when Luján and other panelists criticized insurance companies.

"I see health care as a civil-rights issue," a woman told a reporter after the first discussion.

But several people scattered around the audience seemed more conservative. Luján was asked a question about establishing caps on the amount that could be awarded in malpractice suits. When he said tort reform wasn't part of any health care bill under consideration, some shouted, "Why not?"

When Luján quoted the Congressional Budget Office that the House health care bill would create a $6 billion surplus, one person said loudly, "That's a lie."

The nonpartisan Politifact fact-checking Web site last month criticized another Democratic congressman for making an identical claim. "Only when (the congressman) added some optimistic assumptions did the math work the way he claimed," the Web site said. "We find his claim False."

At a "town hall" meeting in Grand Junction, Colo., on Saturday, President Barack Obama said, "The public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health care reform. This is just one sliver of it, one aspect of it."

Last week at a meeting with state health officials and area health care providers, U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said a bill including a public option would be difficult to pass in the Senate. He said the idea of health care "co-ops" seems to be more palatable to moderate or conservative Democrats and some Republicans. "Frankly, (the co-op idea) gets you pretty much to the same place, the way I understand it," Bingaman said.

Bingaman is part of the so-called "Gang of Six, " a bipartisan group of Senate Finance Committee members trying to hammer out a national health care bill.

Bingaman said the main difference between a public option plan and a co-op is in the management structure. The idea behind both concepts, he said, is to provide alternatives when people buy their insurance.

However, many public option advocates say co-ops won't work. One objection is that co-ops would be too small to compete with the big insurance companies, especially in smaller states where, critics of the idea say, co-ops wouldn't be able to attract enough people to make them effective.

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com. Read his political blog at roundhouseroundup.com. For a related story, click here.