South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said that a health reform bill that reaches the desk of President Barack Obama will not contain language creating a government-run health insurance option.

Sen. Lindsey Graham

“The public option is dead,” Graham, a Republican, said on Fox News Sunday. “It’s probably been dead for a long time because the public is very afraid.”

Graham added that if the public option is dead, so is a comprehensive bill comprised of three House committees’ work that include it, and now “all the action is in the Senate,” with the pending approval of the Senate Finance Committee’s health legislation, expected later this week.

“The House bill is dead because deficit politics apparently matter, and the public option is unacceptable, so that’s a good start,” Graham said, adding that Congress should throw the House bill  “in the garbage can.”

Appearing on the same program, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said the House bill is “not going to pass.” Conrad is one of the “Gang of Six,” a bi-partisan group of senators working to craft the Senate Finance Committee bill on health care reform.

“The only thing that has a prospect of passing is what is happening in the Senate, in the finance committee, where three Democrats and three Republicans have been given the responsibility to come up with a proposal for our colleagues,” Conrad said. “And the proposal that we are developing is fully paid for.”

Last week, Obama called a public program to compete with private insurers “an additional step” to hold companies accountable in providing quality, affordable health care to their customers. He did not go as far to say the public option was a must in a bill that arrives at his desk, however, saying there are many ideas out there to reform the health care system.

Another “Gang of Six” member, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), called the public option “universally opposed by all Republicans” in the Senate and “a roadblock” to building bipartisan consensus to achieve true health reform.

“There’s no way to pass a plan that includes the public option,” she said on CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday.

Snowe said the Senate Finance Committee plans to go with a co-op as an option for Americans to access health insurance and promote competition in the marketplace.

Through a co-op, consumers run a nonprofit health care system that coordinates care and coverage, essentially making it the insurer and the health care provider.