With the heath care debate heating up on the Hill, we’re examining how some communities cut costs and improve the quality of care. Recently, lawmakers have been looking to Grand Junction, Colorado, as a model. The Dartmouth Atlas (a 20-plus year project that examines the wide variation in Medicare use and cost across the U.S.) has ranked Grand Junction one of the most cost-efficient areas in the whole country. Joining us to talk about the Grand Junction model is one of the town’s medical leaders, Dr. Michael Pramenko. He is a family physician and serves on the Colorado Medical Society’s Congress for Health Care Reform.

Today, President Obama goes to Chicago to address the annual meeting of the American Medical Association, and to hear doctors' views about about healthcare reform. Todd Zwillich, The Takeaway's Washington Correspondent, takes a look at what the president is likely to hear.

Today President Obama is in Chicago to pitch his healthcare reform agenda to the American Medical Association. But the AMA represents only one-fourth of all physicians. Joining The Takeaway to explain the relationship Obama is hoping to forge with the medical community is Dr. Steffie Woolhandler. She talks about the different constituencies of doctors and how Obama is including or leaving out the voices of those outside the AMA.

Dr. Woolhander is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard and Co-Director of the Harvard Medical School General Internal Medicine Fellowship program. She is also a co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program.

In last week's public address, President Obama addressed the need for healthcare reform. Watch that video below.

When it comes to health care, do you get what you pay for? Dr. Atul Gawande wanted to examine costs -- and quality. In the latest issue of The New Yorker he compares McAllen, Texas, one of the most expensive health care markets in the country, to the Mayo Clinic, one of the country’s most effective, low-cost health systems. Dr. Gawande is a surgeon and writer; his most recent book is Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance

For more, read Dr. Atul Gawande's article The Cost Conundrum in The New Yorker.

Princeton University Professor Uwe Reinhardt is an expert on health care policy and an adviser to President Obama. In today’s Economix blog in the New York Times, he makes the case for why employment-based health insurance is a deeply flawed system. He joins The Takeaway to spell out his argument.

For more, read Uwe Reinhardt's blog post, Is Employer-Based Health Insurance Worth Saving?, in the Economix blog on nytimes.com.

Yesterday, the Obama administration built momentum for an ambitious plan aimed at reducing the rising cost of health care. The administration announced $2 trillion in voluntary cost reductions over ten years by hospitals, doctors, drug makers, and insurance companies. But will this volunteer plan work? Or will the Obama administration need to regulate the industry with a firmer hand? And where do you, the private citizen, come in when it comes to taking care of yourself and your healthcare? Joining the conversation is Henry J. Aaron, who served as the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare during the Carter administration. He is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Also on The Takeaway is Dean Karlan. He's a behavioral economist at Yale and a co-founder of StickK.com, a site that helps you reach personal goals, like being healthier, by giving yourself an incentive. He's here to help explain how change, especially in health care, can actually trickle up from individuals to the national level.

Today close to 46 million Americans are without health insurance, and of those, more than half are people of color. According to the Institute of Medicine, At least 1 in 3 Latinos is uninsured, as compared with 22% of African Americans, 17% of Asian and Pacific Islanders, and 13% of whites. In the third installment of our series, The Color of Money, we're examining how the economic downturn is exacerbating the already pronounced healthcare disparities among minorities. Job losses since 2007 have led to an estimated 9 million fewer Americans receiving health coverage through the workplace, and a corresponding rise in Medicaid enrollment. Well off white people who are losing their jobs these days are likely to fall into a safety net of COBRA coverage, which they can probably pay for out of their unemployment. Low-income ethnic minorities are losing their jobs too, but the world of healthcare they are likely to enter is one where prescription drugs are too expensive, co-pays too steep to pay, and the ER becomes a last resort.

To assess the current situation and to gauge how bad things could get we are joined by two experts in the field. Cara James is a Senior Policy Analyst for the Race, Ethnicity and Health Care group, and the Director of the Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. And Dr. Robert Schiller is Senior Vice President for Medical Services and Training for the Institute for Family Health at Beth Israel.

For more of The Takeaway's series on The Color of Money, click here.

There’s huge debate over health care reform in this country and it may come as a surprise that one person in particular is not taking part in it: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As our next guest writes in the New York Times today, Hillary Clinton seems eager to distance herself from her failed attempt at health care reform. We’re joined by the New York Times' White House Correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg for her take on the situation.

For more, read Sheryl Gay Stolberg's article, Obama Taps Clinton Ideas but Not Clinton Herself, in today's New York Times.