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.
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:
Go back and listen to all the previous health care reform roundtables in this series.
"I pay Medicare, and if I’m paying state taxes which also contribute, if they allocate that: I’m paying for all this anyway, and the bottom line is, I think the Federal government regulating these companies is better." — Ebon Soul, a 40-year-old high school history and music teacher from Baltimore, Maryland
We finish our week-long series of health care roundtables with a look beyond our borders. We speak to three Americans living abroad about the health care systems in other countries. Christina Geyer joins us from Bavaria, Germany, where she has lived since 2002. Lynne Udalov joins us from Moscow, where she has been for over 10 years. And Amanda Graham joins us from Derry, in Northern Ireland, where she moved in May.
Click through for an overview on the health care system of each country, or read the other round tables in this series.
Part three of our week-long series of round tables brings to the discussion a group likely too-familiar with the health care system: people with long-term illnesses. Robert Groth, of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, has multiple sclerosis. Sid Whigham of Lincoln, Nebraska, had one of his legs amputated due to complications from diabetes and a blood clot; he has also been battling blood cancer for the last two years.
All this week we've been speaking to different groups affected by the debate over health care reform. Today we turn to young people. What we've been hearing – from those generally healthy enough to risk choosing whether or not to have coverage – is that they see it as a gamble. We've compiled a mix of voices from young people wondering if they really need health insurance... or can afford it.
As part of our week-long series of health care roundtables, we’re talking with small business owners about how they want to see reform take shape. Small businesses employ about half of all American workers but only 62 percent of these businesses provide heath insurance. We speak to John Costin, who lives in Kennebunk, Maine and owns Veneer Services Unlimited; Dan Sherry from Barrington, Illinois, who runs two small businesses with his wife; and ReShonda Young from Waterloo, Iowa, who runs the family business, 'Alpha Express.'
As part of our week-long series of health care roundtables, we’re talking with young people. They're coveted by health insurers, but with low salaries and high resilience, they’re often the least likely to buy in. We hear from Savlan Hauser, an architect in Oakland, California who has been buying her own catastrophic health insurance plan for the last three years; Nik Bonovich, a freelance journalist in Sacramento, California, who’s been buying premium health insurance since February; and Golnar Adili, who's been going without health care coverage for the past three years.
Click here to access the other round tables in this series
For more on the guests from today's roundtable continue reading...
All this week, we'll be hosting mini-roundtable discussions about how health care reform could affect different groups of Americans. We kick it off this week with one of the groups who stands to be the most affected by any systematic reform: doctors themselves.
With us today are Dr. Kevin Pho, a primary care physician in Nashua, New Hampshire who also blogs at KevinMD.com, Dr. Charles Prestigiacomo, a neurosurgeon and associate professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and Dr. Tyeese Gaines Reid, who is currently in her third year as an emergency care resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut.
For more on the doctors from today's roundtable continue reading...
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