Senators on Sunday gauged whether President Obama’s speech improved chances for getting a health care overhaul through Congress this year, with assessments ranging from “good” to “strong” to “disaster,” but the debate on a government-run public option still occupied the bulk of attention.

“It was a good speech, but I really believe that the hard work has to be done, and hopefully we can all work together and get it done,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch , R-Utah, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But I really don’t see what they’re trying to do.”

Appearing on the same program, Sen. Lindsey Graham pronounced the speech “a disaster. I thought it was combative. He obviously on the defensive. He’s lumping every critic in with a demagogue. He’s accusing us of bickering when we’re trying to have major policy discussions.”

Graham added that Obama’s address to Congress Sept. 9 “outlined a $900 billion proposal that really doesn’t make sense in how you would pay for it. So I don’t think it advanced the ball substantively. And politically, it made it very hard, I think, to find a middle.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill , D-Mo., countered Graham’s argument by saying Obama “cleared the air about what is true and not true about what we’re trying to get done here and why it’s so important for America.

“I thought it was a strong speech,” she said, “and I think the polling indicated that after, that there were a lot of swing voters out there that said, ‘Hey, he’s willing to compromise and be pragmatic. That’s good.’”

Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad , D-N.D., noted that most Democrats are “pretty much unified in the Senate around a plan that brings down costs, because that’s the central goal here, and I thought the president made a very powerful case that the course we’re on now is utterly unsustainable.”

Conrad also pointed out that the president “said he’s prepared to hear a better idea, so if somebody’s got a better idea, bring it to him. Third, he said, ‘Look, I am ready to move toward the middle.’ He talked about a plan that’s very close to the bipartisan plan that’s being developed in the Finance Committee.”

He also said he didn’t believe Obama is scuttling a public option. “I don’t think he’s giving up. I think he made a very strong case for his support for a public option as an option,” he said. “But I think he also said, ‘Look, I’m open to other ideas.’ In fact, he spoke favorably about the cooperative approach, which would provide a nonprofit competitor but would not be government-run, would be run by its membership, as all co-ops are.”

Graham, however, said the public option “is dead” and “we should just throw it in the garbage can because it’s $239 billion added to the deficit over the a 10-year period.”

McCaskill noted that the “public option in some ways has become a distraction. The meat of this matter is that we’re losing 14,000 Americans from health insurance every day. The meat of the matter is that most middle-class families are worried that they won’t be able to afford health insurance next year.”

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV , D-W.Va., appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” said “if there were a good alternative” to a public option “I would certainly have to look at it” but as things stand, “I haven’t found one.”

“People talk about a cooperative plan, health co-ops. And I called the head of the national association really early, and he said it’s great on water, it’s great on farm, it’s great on electricity, etc., but it really doesn’t work for health care. There’s fewer than 20 in the country, and there are only two that really work ... And I just don’t think you can take the chance. You have to start a national thing, all of the way up, or would you do it state-by-state, which would be harder.”