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Let's drive the message home: we need health insurance reform, we need a strong public option, and we won't settle for less.

There is a consensus of willing leaders from both parties coalescing around the right way forward in health care. Reform should address government-imposed inequities and barriers to true choice and competition.

As Congress debates overhauling the nation's health care system, it should not authorize a reform plan that would further our financial woes. We must avoid creating an unsustainable government program. There is no question that reform is needed, but health care can be made more affordable without massive and expensive new bureaucracies.

Healthcare reform is a paradigmatic case. It is self-evidently necessary and inevitable and has been on the agenda for 35 years, and the political class seems completely unable to respond to it.

Well, first let me say that I think health care reform is important. It has to be a priority. And our system is broken. The Finance Committee bill is the best effort yet, due in large measure to the efforts of my colleague, Olympia Snowe, but it's not there yet. It falls short.

It is critical that we pass legislation to dramatically reform our health insurance system, and this reform should include a genuine public option, universal coverage, an end to insurance policy rescissions, and no restrictions against covering people with pre-existing conditions.

I support health care reform in this country, but the current bills we have before us are too big, too costly, and the people who send me to Washington to be their voice are opposed to them and this process.

I have stood on the front lines of the health care system as a doctor, patient and concerned parent. Those experiences have served as my guideposts throughout the struggle to reform America's health care system. And it's those same experiences that tell me that fear and election hysteria should not overshadow the reality of reform.

We will have health care reform in America.

I believe our health care system is in drastic need of innovative, patient-centered reforms that encourage competition and increase consumer choice, not the bloated bureaucracy, tax increases, rationing, and mandates in the president's government takeover.