The Questions

At his health care townhall meeting in Annandale, Virginia, President Obama took questions from audience as well as questions submitted online via social networking sites.  Senior Advisor, Valerie Jarrett said the President did not see the questions beforehand.  But as reported earlier, the questions were selected by White House staff.

Here's what folks asked:

Question 1 (from YouTube): Why are we considering a health care plan which maintains the private insurance companies with their high overhead costs, instead of a single-payer plan, which would eliminate the high overhead costs, saving the American taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars, while covering everyone in our country?

Question 2 (from live audience): Watch the video here

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Question 3 (from YouTube): SMALL CHILD: My mommy and daddy have small businesses and we need health care.
MOTHER: I actually have to work for a company so that we can get coverage because my older daughter is an automatic decline and we're just too small of a business to be able to absorb the cost. How can health care reform help us?
Question 4 (from live audience): I work for a group called Health Care for America NOW ... obviously I read the news a lot, and I've been hearing a lot about the price tag of health reform and how people are very concerned that it's going to cost a trillion dollars, and we're trying to keep it under a certain number. I'm most concerned about making it affordable, folks like me, the American people. So what do you -- and like you said, you're committed to making this deficit-neutral. So I hope you could talk a little bit about affordability and what your plans are for that.
Question 5 (from Twitter and Facebook): Does it really make sense, Mr. President, to tax me on my health care coverage?
Question 6 (from YouTube): Mr. President, as a physician, I know the cost of defensive medicine drives medical costs upward. Now, at your health care forum you said that you wanted to find out what works. In my home state of Texas, we know what works, and our Medical Justice Act has done just that. Now, unfortunately, you recently told the AMA you were opposed to capping non-economic damages, even though a state like mine has proven that it does work. Now, will you reaffirm your commitment to find out what works and then ask Congress for its implementation?
Question 7 (from live audience): I'm a member of SEIU and I'm down here in Fairfax County working on Change That Works. What can I do, as a member of the union, to help you with your reform bill?