Start fresh

President Barack Obama will address Congress and the American people tonight on health care reform. The president's goal is to convince members of Congress to support his overhaul plan and to change public opinion, which has been slowly slipping away from his proposal.

This address is extremely important because of the subject matter. But it's also important for the success of an Obama presidency in many ways.

Either the president will amend his original proposal to bring on board those remaining skeptics, or he will turn to a procedural move that will assure him the votes.

Either way, tonight's address is critical on several fronts.

I'm only dreaming, but I wish the president would say the following:

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My fellow Americans:

Discussion on health care reform has siphoned all of the public discussion and media attention for far too long.

So let's start fresh.

Unless we have strong support for a massive overhaul of health care, we should stop and rethink our plan.

As of today there is no strong support.

Maybe we should approach this problem differently. With all due respect to Senator Reid and Representative Pelosi, maybe their view of the world is radically different from that of most Americans. And to be fair, some on the far right in this chamber don't share views with most Americans.

We are currently at war. Unemployment is at 10 percent. And my stimulus plan has yet to produce the results I had expected.

Health care reform is critical, and it must be addressed. But a poor decision at this point might be worse than no decision.

So let's start fresh.

For starters, my experts tell me we have almost 50 million uninsured Americans. That is unacceptable. But, just out of curiosity, I'd like to know more about this underserved population. If the safety nets of Medicaid and Medicare are not reaching this population, then obviously we have a large hole in our safety nets.

But if I'm going to ask taxpayers to help this uninsured population, it's only fair we tell them exactly where their money is going.

I now understand the American public deserves answers to their questions. So let's provide those answers.

Just how many more doctors are required to serve this added insured base? Will their time and care be rationed because of an additional 50 million people in the system?

And I need to explain how Medicare will not be diminished, even though I plan to remove billions of dollars from that program to help fund this overhaul.

I need to explain why you can buy a Tylenol at the pharmacy for a dime but it costs $15 while you're in the hospital. In fact, I need to talk a lot more about containing costs before I begin to add that many more people to our funding.

Someone reminded me recently about my campaign pledge of a new bipartisan Washington. To keep my word, we're going to consider both sides of the aisle from this point forward.

And, if we can't agree, we'll have to answer to the American people.

I may have the votes to ram a bill through Congress. But votes here are different from public support.

Since public support is obviously lacking, we'd better go back to the drawing board.

So let's start fresh.