Click on the picture above and you'll see Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott—medical doctor, child psychiatrist, ten-term incumbent—at the White House yesterday discussing health care reform with President Barack Obama and members of the House Ways and Means Committe (on which McDermott sits).

It's not the first time McDermott has been at the White House recently to talk health care. In late April McDermott was selected by the House Progressive Caucus, of which he's a member, to talk directly to Obama about why it's so important to have a public option in order to make health care reform meaningful.

"It all stands or falls on that," McDermott spokesman Mike DeCesare told me today. "If there isn’t a public option, you’re not going to have real health care reform.”

McDermott is hardly the only person telling Obama this, and it sounds like the president's been listening. Just as important is whether most of Congress is listening (and can be convinced).

DeCesare couldn't talk about the particulars of McDermott's meetings with Obama but said McDermott has emerged from them—and from endless other health care meetings that are now consuming McDemott's schedule as Congress heads toward a vote on the issue before the August recess—feeling positive.

"He is still optimistic,” DeCesare said. "There is so much momentum going for meaningful reform."

Want to know more about the public option and McDermott's take on it? Click here, or hit play on this:

Photo via the office of Congressman McDermott.