Slideshow: Forum on Health Reform – and next steps

Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Slideshow: Forum on Health Reform – and next steps
As always, White House Photographer Pete Souza captured the day in a way nobody else could:

But as important a step as yesterday was, there is a long way to go. The process will now fan out across the country, with a new series of Regional White House Forums on Health Reform which will be hosted by Governors in their states and will include doctors, patients, policy experts and everybody in between. The regional forums, which will be in California, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina and Vermont over the coming weeks, will be open conversations across ideological and partly lines that build off of what was learned in the forum yesterday, with a video from President Obama to kick them off.

"Health care reform is a fiscal imperative," President Obama said. "Skyrocketing health care costs are draining our federal budget, undermining our long-term economic prosperity and devastating American families. The time for reform is now and these regional forums are some of the key first steps toward breaking the stalemate we have been stuck in for far too long. The forums will bring together diverse groups of people all over the country who have a stake in reforming our health care system and ask them to put forward their best ideas about how we bring down costs and expand coverage for American families."