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Obama's Task on Health Care

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President Barack Obama walks to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday, Sept. 7, 2009. (AP)
President Barack Obama walks to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday, Sept. 7, 2009. (AP)

And so, all the chips are on the table tonight for Barack Obama. Except they’re not chips. They’re lives.
American health care is in trouble. Even Republican leaders say the status quo is not acceptable. The last month has been a melee over what to do.
Tonight, President Obama makes a rare address to a joint session of Congress and the American public to make his case for reform. The hour is late. Stakes are over the moon.
This hour, On Point: We’ll talk with U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, and more, about the president’s challenge and health care reform.
You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services. She was governor of Kansas from 2003 until earlier this year.

Also from Washington we're joined by Ceci Connolly, national health care correspondent for The Washington Post.

And from Washington we're also joined by Gail Wilensky, economist and senior fellow at Project HOPE, an international health education foundation. She was an adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and a contributor to the McCain health care plan. She was administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration under President George H.W. Bush, directing the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

And from Ann Arbor, Mich., we're joined by Jonathan Cohn, senior editor at The New Republic, where he writes the widely-cited health care blog, The Treatment. He's also a senior fellow at the non-partisan public policy think tank Demos and author of the 2007 book "Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis - and the People Who Pay the Price." 

This program aired on September 9, 2009.

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