Last night President Obama used his bully pulpit to make a very specific pitch for health care reform before a joint session of Congress... and, incidentally, the watching American public. The Takeaway's Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, gives us the highlights. Before the speech, we spoke to some of our listeners who were unconvinced by the current state of the health care reform debate and the plans for reform promoted by Congress. Today, we check back in with Faith Dow of California, Brad Bynum in Oklahoma, and Troy Erickson from North Dakota, to see if the president won their support.

President Obama’s push to reform the nation's health care system is not a new fight. It has been a battle fought by just about every occupant of the Oval Office for the past 75 years. From Roosevelt to Eisenhower to LBJ and Nixon to both Clintons, universal health coverage has been a long-fought campaign. We speak to James Morone, political science professor at Brown University and co-author of The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office, about waging war in Washington.

Our Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, finds himself far outside the Beltway today. He is in Detroit after attending a townhall held last night on health care reform. While the crowd was mostly Democrats and supported President Obama, they had a lot of tough questions about health care reform.

Last night in front of a rare joint session of Congress, President Obama addressed the issue that has been on everyone's minds: health care reform. His speech was to-the-point, tackling issues such as insurance reforms, pre-existing conditions, malpractice insurance reform, and calling to task members of Congress for their failure to move more quickly. The president seemed to endorse much of the latest draft of a health care reform bill, one being circulated by Sen. Max Baucus, but hinted that he may be willing to pass the bill without bi-partisan support. For more we talk to our Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich as well as David Herszenhorn, the congressional correspondent for the New York Times, who was live blogging the speech.

In case you missed the presidential address, here it is in its entirety:

Tonight, the president will appear before a joint session of Congress—perhaps the grandest setting for such an event—and deliver a speech on the need for health care reform. Among those watching will be Congressmen and Senators, but far beyond the halls of Congress, he will also be addressing Brad Bynum in Oklahoma and Faith Dow in California. As Americans who are still unconvinced on health care reform, they are who President Obama really needs to convince in his speech.

We also talk to New York Times White House correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg about what might be in the president's speech tonight.

President Obama is addressing a joint session of Congress tonight. His mission? To sell health care reform. In what may be the pitch of his presidency, President Obama hopes to jumpstart the debate that has stalled over the summer while critics of his health proposals dominated many public forums and his approval ratings dropped. To help President Obama get in touch with his inner Willie Loman and sell health care reform to a seemingly skeptical audience, we have gathered a roundtable of experts: Ted Widmer is a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton; Lisa Schiffren is a former speechwriter for Vice President Dan Quayle; and Cindy Gallop, an advertising consultant and former chair of ad agency BBH.

President Obama is preparing his Wednesday address on health care reform to a joint session of Congress. Aides say the president is about to adopt a more vigorous role in the debate as lawmakers return from recess. We talk to Takeaway regular Julie Mason of the Washington Examiner and Theda Skocpol, professor of government and sociology at Harvard University and author of "Boomerang: Health Care Reform and the Turn against Government."

The hotly contested "public option" for health care coverage is up for debate on Capitol Hill next week. Some say it's essential for reform while others, such as Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, say it's not critical.  Sebelius said last month that the public option was “not the essential element” of the president’s health care plan.

For a closer look, we talk to Xavier Becerra (D-California), Congressman from California and the vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus. (click through for the full interview transcript)

It has been a long, arduous summer for Democrats pushing health care reform. Despite this summer's shouting campaign at town halls and President Obama’s falling approval rating – which recently dropped to 50% – the White House is expected to press on with more aggressive health care reform efforts. Politico.com reports that President Obama will lay out his specific demands for health care legislation as early as next week, when lawmakers return to Washington. Can Obama get a bill back on track to be passed this year? We speak with Politico reporter Alex Burns and Paul Starr, a senior health policy adviser in the Clinton White House and author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning book, The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The rise of a sovereign profession and the making of a vast industry.

Our health care roundtable discussions are sparking debate. One guest on Tuesday's show made a startling assertion: that the care her sick son received in the United States was far superior than the attention he would have gotten in Canada or England, a statement which jumpstarted the conversation among our listeners. To see just how America's health care system really stacks up against other countries, (and to check on yesterday's guest's assertion) we called Uwe Reinhardt. The Princeton professor of economics and public affairs has done extensive work comparing international health care systems.

We've hosted roundtable discussions about the pros and cons of health care reform, and talked to people who don't have health insurance, and those who do. For today, we're talking to people who not only have health insurance, but are pleased with what they have. A new public opinion poll states that 80 percent of insured people from all walks of life are happy with their current insurance.

Our roundtable guests include:

• Ebon Soul, a 40-year-old high school history and music teacher from Baltimore, Maryland who is politically independent, but registered as a Democrat.
• Lori Roman, a 46-year-old non-profit executive and political conservative from Annapolis, Maryland. She is the founder of Regular Folks United, an online forum featuring right-leaning bloggers.

Go back and listen to all the previous health care reform roundtables in this series.

We check in with Julie Mason, White House correspondent for the Washington Examiner. President Obama seems to be hunkering down and working hard on his health care plans before Congress comes back into session next week.

President Barack Obama is back at work this week, and it's safe to say that health care reform will remain at the top of the president's agenda. Will President Obama still try to compromise with Republicans or will the president and Democrats go it alone, using procedural techniques to pass reform with a simple majority in the Senate? Here to help us understand the very difficult path to health care reform is Jay Newton-Small, Washington reporter for Time Magazine.

For this week's agenda segment, we look ahead to President Obama returning to Washington and the developing plans for heath care reform, current economic numbers, and the elections in Japan. Joining us are Marcus Mabry, international business editor for our partner The New York Times, and Rob Watson, defense correspondent for our partner the BBC.

The Massachusetts Governor’s office is feeling pressure from Capitol Hill to sign into law a bill the late Senator Edward Kennedy proposed. If ratified, the bill would give Governor Deval Patrick the legal authority to name a temporary replacement for the senator. The existing law was established during John Kerry's 2004 presidential run and specifically enacted to prevent then-Governer Mitt Romney from appointing a Republican replacement had the Democratic senator won the presidency; the law mandates Patrick wait at least 145 days to hold a special election. Timothy Murray is the Lieutenant Governor for the State of Massachusetts and tells us about the bill's progress.

In his 47 years in the U.S. Senate, Senator Edward Kennedy had become a powerful force in Washington politics.  Of the many issues he worked on, Kennedy repeatedly called reforming the health care system "the cause of his life."  What will his passing do to the debate. and who will fill his void? For more, The Takeaway talks to Julie Mason, White House correspondent for the Washington Examiner.

Will the passing of Senator Kennedy effect the outcome of health care reform? Our guests talk about how they remember the senator as well as how the health care debate rolls on during these dog days of summer. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are looking at one very influential group in particular: senior citizens. And while the Republicans wait for Senator Charles Grassley to decide where he falls on the debate, the Democrats continue to rally around their new poster politician for health care reform, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean. To make sense of this week in the health care reform debate is Jay Newton-Small, Washington reporter for Time Magazine; Jonathan Wilson, public radio reporter for WAMU in Washington; and Congressman Gerald Connolly (D-VA).