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Discussion and Analysis of President Obama's Town Hall Meeting in Grand Junction, Colorado

Aired August 15, 2009 - 19:09   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: President Barack Obama just finishing up his speech in Grand Junction, Colorado. We listened live. He took some questions, took some tough questions there, talked for quite a bit through some of those questions.

And, you know, everyone listening, some people got their voices heard there. There were a few protesters in the crowd as well. And there were also some people who said, "You know, I can't believe the president is in my hometown."

So you had all of it there happening in Grand Junction, Colorado, as you look at the president there on the stage and about to leave Grand Junction, Colorado, for a rare, on this day Saturday, weekend town hall meeting. That just shows you just how critical this health care reform issue has gotten for the White House, for the administration and really for everyone across the country.

There were some audio problems at the top that prevented us from bringing you the beginning of the president's speech in Grand Junction. Everyone had those problems and we have the prepared text from the White House and we just want to summarize what you missed.

Basically, Mr. Obama made some introductory remarks, saying he had been holding town hall meetings around the country, namely New Hampshire and Montana. And he had heard many concerns and issues and he said, people had been losing their health insurance through no fault of their own, even though they had paid their premium or that they were stuck in with huge bills because their benefits had reached a cap. The president said that it's wrong and that he wants to fix it.

Again, a lot of people, I have been getting some of your responses, your e-mails saying, hey, this is the same speech he gave in Montana. This is the same speech he gave in New Hampshire. So, it's very similar. The remarks at the top are very similar to what he had given earlier in the week.

I want to go now to my guest who had been joining here, Allen Hardage. He's a director for America's Town Hall. And then also, Virginia Galloway, interim state director of Americans for Prosperity. They held a town hall meeting earlier today, and we're going to talk to them about that.

But we also have two medical experts with differing views on this debate as well: Dr. Rani Whitfield. He's a family practitioner in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He's a founder of Hip Hop Healthy Coalition, a nonprofit charity that promotes health among young people. And in the interest of full disclosure, I want to tell you that Dr. Whitfield supplements his income with speaking engagements.

And then we have Kent Holtorf as well. He is an internist and founder of the Holtorf Medical Group in Los Angeles. He derives all of his income from his practice.

So, everybody here is helping us get through this.

I want to go now to Allan and Virginia here. We're sitting here, listening, a lot of the questions that we had, someone eventually in the audience answered some of those questions. Was there anything -- everyone says, you know, because you're holding these town hall meetings that means that you disagree 100 percent with the president. Was there anything in the president's town hall -- in his questioning or speech -- that you liked, that you agreed with?

ALLEN HARDAGE, DIRECTOR, AMERICA'S TOWN HALL: Absolutely, I love the idea of being able to buy health insurance and if you move to Colorado where he was at, being able to take that health insurance with you.

I don't think, however, that we need a government plan that's going to take all of that control away from the state governments and put it in Washington, D.C. I think we need to keep that control closer to the people. We already have a mechanism in place to do this -- it's called the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

LEMON: But, you know, we're already in -- you know, doctors have been telling me this and I have been getting a lot of feedback from doctors and people who work in the insurance industry, that under the current plan, we're already paying for the uninsured. We're already paying that with either higher medical bills, higher premiums. So, it's already being paid for. So, you know, why not get this reform on the table and get it out of the way.

I think, your ears perked up, Virginia, when you heard the president say, "Hey, listen, you know, I'm no expert in all of this, but I can tell you what, there is no magic bullet that is going to make it a perfect bill where everyone will be covered without some of us having to pay for it."

VIRGINIA GALLOWAY, AMERICANS FOR PROSPERITY: Well, I think that was his moment of truth there. This is undeveloped. That he is a student and not a graduate. And I think that a lot of Americans feel the same way.

So, what is the rush? Why do we have this artificial deadline of October to get this bill passed when in fact, maybe we don't know enough about the bill, maybe he doesn't know what will happen as a result of this bill. Maybe all of us need to put our collective heads together in a productive way and get a better bill before we pass something that messes up a very good medical system that we have here in the United States.

LEMON: In the same thing, either one of you can jump in here. I was talking to some people out here, we were talking about the, you know, the outrage we've been seeing at town halls all across the country. Where was the outrage five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago? Why all of the sudden this outrage now? At least the president is trying to reform health care. But -- so where do the outrage suddenly come from?

HARDAGE: Don, this is the second town hall he's done in the last week that I actually saw real Americans get up and ask question. It wasn't a pre-selected group or...

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Real Americans, that's another term that really sets people off.

HARDAGE: Well, let me -- let me tell you what I mean by that.

LEMON: We're all real Americans, everybody.

HARDAGE: Anybody can get in.

LEMON: Yes.

HARDAGE: And anybody can ask a question. And you've seen a completely different tenor in the town hall he held on Tuesday and today, than town halls we've been seeing so far in this debate. That's what I mean by real Americans.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Maybe, you know what? The whole real American thing -- can we lose that real American?

GALLOWAY: Sure.

LEMON: Because everybody in this country who is a citizen of this country...

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: We're all real Americans and part of that is part of the issue that really sets people off and divides people. So, let's get rid of that "real Americans." We're all American, real American...

GALLOWAY: Sure.

LEMON: ... conservatives, liberals, independents -- we're all, poor and rich, real Americans.

HARDAGE: Absolutely.

LEMON: Continue your point.

HARDAGE: But here's my point. If we're going to open this debate up and have everybody come in and put their ideas forth, pretend it's absolutely. So he said himself, this is a hard issue, so we need to -- we need to bring everybody to the table. Let's hear everybody's ideas and concerns, and come up with a consensus together.

LEMON: Yes. This is good.

HARDAGE: Absolutely.

LEMON: This is sort -- we should -- the only thing we didn't have here, we had truth, real talk or whatever, we didn't have beer, though, you know?

HARDAGE: We'll work on that.

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: I know what you're going to do now, you said an adult beverage is in the work. Thank you. Thank you both so much to join us here. So many facets of this health care reform, the bills that are going around. We could talk all day about it, but unfortunately, we don't have the time.

Thank you guys for sitting and listening to the president, and sitting here talking to me. I learned a lot from you. I hope you guys learned as well.

HARDAGE: Absolutely.

GALLOWAY: And thank you.

LEMON: Thank you very much.

OK. I want to go now to Ed Henry. He is our senior White House correspondent. He is in Grand Junction as well. Ed Henry was in the room.

Ed, you heard my guests who are saying, you know, for the first time -- there wasn't a lot of yelling and screaming, and you may have heard some protesters there -- but for the first time, they heard some very thoughtful answers from the president, very thoughtful questions from the people in the audience. And it seems like the health care -- these town halls are taking a turn where people are starting to get more information out of them rather than just yelling?

ED HENRY, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It certainly does seem so, and, I think, to pick up on that, the most dramatic moment today, the really key new thing we heard was the president got very emotional.

For the first time, I heard him invoke his own grandmother's death last year. You remember right before the election, out in Hawaii, she passed away. And the president invoked that for the first time because he was pushing back again on critics who have been charging that this panel of experts that would advice elderly people about end-of-life issues -- that critics have been charging that's encouraging euthanasia, et cetera -- the president has pushed back on that before, but he has never invoked his own grandmother's death and said, "Look, I have been through a situation like this, I would never encourage euthanasia."

Take a listen to how he pushed back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: You can have an honest disagreement with me on that. What you can't do -- or you can but you shouldn't do, is start saying things like we want to set up death panels to pull the plug on grandma. I mean, come on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENRY: So, you hear that right there. We're not going to pull the plug on grandma. He had used that general phrase at previous town halls. But right before that, he invoked his own grandma. That had not been done before. He's talked about his mother's battle with cancer, how she worried at the end of her life that she would lose her health insurance because of her preexisting condition.

And so, he's used that before, but it's very interesting that he invoked his own grandmother. It shows how personal this battle is to him, Don.

LEMON: All right. Ed, any other moments that you -- that you notice there. This is one moment for me when I talked to my guest here.

And, by the way, the reason we have two guests here who are against the president's health care plan is because that is what we're covering here today in Atlanta. It was a town hall and that's what town hall is about. Otherwise, if it was something different, we'd have two people who support the plan. So, there's your answers to that.

But, Ed, I also noticed, when he was talking there, he says, "I'm not an expert in all of this, I have suddenly become a student of all of this, but there is no magic bullet that's going to fix it here and we all need to work together." Did you notice that moment?

HENRY: Yes, absolutely, because I think, as the criticism has come in, we can't just focus on conservatives criticizing the plan. There are people on the left, liberals in the president's own party who want a single-payer system, want the government to take over completely. They're not happy either. They think the president is softening his reform push.

While conservatives are charging socialism, you've got people saying no, no, no, in fact he's soft-pedaling this. He's not going far enough. So, I think that's why he's trying to find some middle ground here.

I think the other moment to point out. There was a young man who stood up and said, "Look, I'm ready to debate you, Mr. President. Let's have an Oxford-style debate. Let's keep going." And the president chuckled and said, "You know, look, I think it's pretty cool actually that you just challenged the president of the United States to an Oxford-style debate. It shows you have some chutzpah."

And the question, the substance though, was basically how can you expect with the public option -- how could private insurance companies compete with that if the government sort of got a corner on the market? A very important question that your guests have raised before and the president basically said, "Look, you know, we can't just give the government-run part of the program a blank check. They have to abide by some guidelines. We're going to go through that. We're going to explain that in the days ahead."

And he used the example again of, "Look, the Postal Service is backed by the federal government, but UPS and FedEx do pretty well. You can have private companies competing with the government and still do pretty well." That was his point, Don.

LEMON: All right. CNN's Ed Henry -- Ed, thank you. We appreciate your reporting through all of this -- our senior White House correspondent.

The facts, just the facts here, that's what we all want when it comes to health care reform. And we'll hunt for those facts and we won't stop until we get them -- because we have Lori Robertson. She is with FactCheck.org. She joins us to break it all down. Resident's remarks -- president's remarks, I should say -- excuse me -- next.

And we'll hear from the doctors joining tonight. Did they like what they heard from the president? Was it true what they heard, his answers? What are their concerns?

We're following you, you're following us -- Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or iReport.com. We want to hear from you. This is an important issue and we're covering it live for you, right here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: All right. We're covering this debate on health care live. We're at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, where a town hall, it was billed as the biggest town hall so far, wrapped up a short time ago and then we just brought you live coverage of the president in Grand Junction, Colorado.

And we have two medical experts with differing views on this debate. Dr. Rani Whitfield is a family practitioner in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He is the founder of Hip-Hop Healthy Coalition, a nonprofit charity that promotes health among young people. And again, for the interest of disclosure, Dr. Whitfield supplements his income with speaking engagement.

And then, there's Dr. Kent Holtorf. He is an internist and the founder of the Holtorf Medical Group in Los Angeles. He derives all of his income from his practice.

Thank you very much guys. You both were standing by and listening to the president.

I'm going to start with you Dr. Whitfield. DR. RANI WHITFIELD, FAMILY PRACTITIONER: OK.

LEMON: Did you think the president answered the tough questions about that? About, you know, the single-payer, about where it's going to come from, about where Medicaid and Medicare stands on all of this? What did you get out of the president's speech?

WHITFIELD: Well, some of the high points, the things that hit on is defining where the deficit came from. And, you know, people's misconception about, oh, you know, it's the war, it's this and that, but, you know, that health care is playing a huge role in the deficit of our country.

I will agree with the young man from Oxford. I wanted a little more from the president on this debate about how can you make that program more -- how can you make a public option more competitive with the other option. So, that was one area that I'm concerned.

But I do think the president made a good point, especially the question about misinformation and how that's dividing our country. You know, that we can have a health I can debate. Dr. Holtorf, I respect him. I have read some of things that he's done. And so, we can have this healthy debate without bickering and fighting with each other.

But on the flip side of that, I still think that we're the only industrialized country in this world that does not have universal health care for all its men, women and children. And so, I think, even though there may be some holes in this plan, we do need some type of universal health care for our citizens. It's just without question.

LEMON: I have a question to you Dr. Whitfield from a viewer, but I wait until because I want to get Dr. Holtorf's response to this.

What did you like about what the president said and his answers, Dr. Holtorf? What did you like? What didn't you like?

Are we running that video right now guys or are we going to have it later of the president?

The president in Colorado springs right now, and you should see the video there of the president -- and as we look at the video, I want to go to Dr. Holtorf and ask him that question. You hear my question. What did you think?

DR. KENT HOLTORF, INTERNIST: Yes, I thought it was one of the better town hall meetings and more informative than previous ones. One concern I have is in terms of cost, how the government is going to pay for it. He said 2/3 are going to be paid through with elimination of waste. You know, realistically, when did the government ever eliminate waste?

And you like at Hawaii did a similar program with the government option and it was abandoned after seven months. The costs just spiraled out of control. Corruption went from about 2 percent to 20 percent. And so, I think it's a big problem.

And he mentioned the drug companies, how they're willing to take less. Really, if he did -- you know, the White House did a deal with the drug companies that really going to make it so that they can't negotiate rates on drugs. They gave a little bit or a pittance and then made a deal with them.

So, some things are concerning in terms of cost, how it's really going to get paid for.

LEMON: But the president said we're going to do it without adding to the deficit, we're going to do it without cutting the fat, trimming the fat, he said. And no sweetheart deals, he's talking about, for insurance companies and other companies and agencies like that.

HOLTORF: Well, he already did a deal with the drug companies where they can't negotiate rates for drugs. So, I mean -- it's, you know -- but the drug company took a little bit off the table and said we'll take, you know, an $80 million reduction. But now, they know they're going to get it in the back end. And they're basically, really for drugs, this reform, because they know they're going to make out.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: I heard -- I have heard some of my guests and the people opposed saying, you know, for a free market and insurance companies, how you compete against the government. I don't think you're going to get many people who feel sorry for the insurance company who are making billions and billions of profits a year.

Hey, we're getting close to losing you guys on the satellite time and the time we have left. Real quickly, someone said, to ask Dr. Whitfield, "Will you still treat someone that came in, that had an ME/CFS, would you still treat them?"

WHITFIELD: Yes. I mean, I treat undeserved patients. I have on pro-rated scale in my office. Some patients I treat free. I actually provide care for prisoners.

And one of the points that I want to make that, a lot of my patients that live at or below the poverty level can't afford to come in and just be cash-paying patients. So, there needs to be some universal health care provider for these individuals.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: So your answer is yes?

WHITFIELD: Yes. Yes, I do, Don.

LEMON: OK. Hey, thanks to both of you guys. We really appreciate you sticking around. And again, I wish I could talk to you more. We're going to try to bring you back because this health care debate, this health care reform debate is not going to go away any time soon. So, thank you guys.

WHITFIELD: All right, Don. I don't know if I needed an appointment, I've been real fatigued. So, I've been seeing you soon.

HOLTORF: All right.

WHITFIELD: Take care, Don.

LEMON: All right. Thank you. Doctors' orders, thank you very much. Take care and say hello to my hometown Baton Rouge.

WHITFIELD: You got it.

LEMON: So, the facts -- just the facts here on CNN, that's what we all want when it comes to health care reform. We'll hunt for those facts and we won't stop until we get them, because Lori Robertson is with FactCheck.org and she joins us to break down the president's remarks next. We're going in depths about the president's questions and answers, what's the truth, the facts?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: We continue our coverage of President Obama's Colorado town hall. You know he covered a lot of ground from the debate over the so-called public option to what he described as the misinformation being spread by his political opponents. And he also said that all Americans must come to grips with a very hard truth.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The truth is, I want to be completely honest here, there is no perfect, painless, silver bullet out there that solves every problem, that gives everybody perfect health care for free. There isn't. I wish there was. I wish I could just say, you know what? We're going to change the system, everybody will get as much care as they want, any time they want, everybody will have it and it won't cost anything.

And doctors will be happy and nurses will be happy, hospitals will be happy, insurance companies will still make a lot of profits. Drug companies will be able to charge as much as they want. I can't do it. Nobody can. What I can do is try to sort through what are all the options available, be realistic about where we're going on health care, say to myself, if we keep on doing what we're doing, we are in a world of hurt.

We can't afford what we're doing right now. More people are going to lose health insurance, more employers are going to drop coverage or push more coverage on to their employees with higher premiums and higher deductibles, Medicare and Medicaid will go broke, state budgets and federal budgets will be unsustainable. And then we're going to have to make some really bad decisions where we have no good options, even worse options than we have right now.

And what's going to end up happening is, mark my words, if we do nothing, at some point, Medicare in about eight to nine years goes into the red. Somebody mentioned it was going broke, yes, it is going broke. So here's what's going to happen if we don't change the delivery systems and change some of the incentives, we'll have a choice. We'll either have to cut Medicare, in which case seniors then will bear the brunt of it or we'll have to raise taxes, which nobody likes, and we still will be paying about $5,000 to $6,000 more than any other advanced country in the world and not get better health care for it.

Now that doesn't make sense. So in terms of misinformation, there's - because there's no perfect solution, we can have legitimate debates about the public option that we just had, that was a good, serious debate. And you can make a plausible argument as to why we shouldn't have a public option. I believe that we should on balance, it's not perfect, it's not going to solve every problem, but I think it should actually would keep the insurance companies more honest.

You can have an honest disagreement with me on that. What you can't do, or you can but what you shouldn't do, is start saying things like we want to set up death panels to pull the plug on grandma. I mean, come on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: All right. The president speaking just moments ago in Grand Junction, Colorado and since the health care reform debate blew up on the national agenda. There's been no shortage of claims about what will happen. Some of those claims have been pretty outrageous and really some of those claims have been out right lies like the so- called death panels. We heard the president talked about there.

Lori Robinson is with factcheck.org. Factcheck.org is part of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. It receives no funding from corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. And she has some straight answers about what we have been hearing separating the fact from the fiction.

Death panels, Lori, flat out not true, the president addressed it.

LORI ROBINSON, FACTCHECK.ORG: Yes, not true, and I think he explained it pretty well. It comes from a real misrepresentation of an actual provision in the bill that would require Medicare to cover voluntary counseling sessions between seniors and their doctor on end of life care, talking about what kind of care they want at the end of their lives, do they want to make a living will, talking about hospice care, those kinds of things.

So right now, Medicare won't pay for that. It's not a covered benefit and under this bill it would be, and that somehow how twisted into required Medicare counseling and telling seniors how to cut their lives short, and that's just simply not true.

LEMON: The president said if we keep on the way that we are, even if we cut Medicare or cut Medicaid or raise taxes, we still pay more than $5,000, more than any other country in the world, it doesn't make sense, true or false?

ROBINSON: That's false. We do spend more than other countries but we've looked into this one. We actually spent $2,500 more than the next highest spending country per capita, not $5,000 to $6,000 more.

LEMON: All right. The president also said that someone asked him about the insurance companies that wasn't really fair because the insurance companies by competing with the government, the insurance companies have to pay taxes, but they're competing with an organization, meaning the government and that doesn't have to pay taxes and that has no profit motive. Some are saying that is not fair. Is that true or false?

ROBINSON: Well, it's - I guess an opinion whether that's fair or not. But this - the federal plan, the public option as the president and Democrats call it is one of the more controversial parts of the bill.

LEMON: Was there anything just completely bogus or outrageous that you heard from someone who was in the audience, something you heard here from the guests or from the president of the United States, Lori?

ROBINSON: I don't think so. Actually I wrote down some notes on some things I want to look into.

LEMON: Well, hold that thought. Hold that thought. Things that you want - I want to know the things you want to look into. Because we're going to take a break real quick.

ROBINSON: OK.

LEMON: And you can look into that over the break and then we can talk about it. So stick around. We want to check another fact the president brought up tonight about the impact, Lori, of health care reform on the deficit. We're trying to get to the bottom of the truth her on CNN, the facts when it comes to health care reform and to the town hall, all of the rhetoric, all of the questions, all of the answers, what's the truth behind it. We're getting to the bottom of it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: I'm Don Lemon at the Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta where a big health care town hall was held earlier today, and you know, the president, of course, was in Grand Junction, Colorado at a town hall today. And our coverage now continues of that. So the president of the United States has repeatedly said reforming the health care system must be part of the wider effort to get the federal deficit under control. Today he took that argument just a step further.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: If we could just get health care inflation to match the inflation on food and other items, all of our deficit - long-term deficit problems would be solved. Just that alone, if we could just reduce the amount of health care inflation, our long-term deficit problems would be solved. This is the most important thing we can do for deficit reduction. And I want everybody to remember that. Because in this debate, you have heard a lot of people say we can't afford to do this because our deficits and debts are too high. The biggest driver of our deficits and debt is health care.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: All right. So we've heard many claims about what health care reform will mean for Americans, including as you heard the president say, what it would do to the federal deficit. Lori Robertson is with FactCheck.org. Factcheck.org, part of the Annenberg Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. And again, receives no funding from corporations, labor unions, political parties, lobbying organizations or individuals. So she has some straight answers for us tonight. So this idea of cutting the fat right now as it becomes fiscal responsibility, the president spoke about, how true is that?

ROBINSON: Well, you know, he talked again about getting 2/3 of the cost for the health care overhaul by eliminating waste. Most of that are some ideas to get some savings out of Medicare and as we have written the bills, the major bills in the House and the Senate, don't do that. They don't get 2/3 of the costs covered from such savings.

And in fact they fall short, it's hundreds of billions of dollars over two years added to the deficit under both of those bills. So it remains to be seen whether they can really cover the cost the way the president has said.

LEMON: When everyone it seems, Lori, has an issue, the people who do have an issue with it, talks about this public option, the public option, and the president said that the public option is only a sliver of the plan, no one is going - is talking about a government take over of health care, no one is talking about a government takeover of health care and the public option only a sliver of a plan, true?

ROBINSON: Well, I guess sliver is almost a matter of opinion, but it is true that this bill in the House and the bill in the Senate don't call for a complete government takeover of health care.

LEMON: OK. So it doesn't call for that.

ROBINSON: No.

LEMON: Do you - have you - have you done any research on this idea of going across the borders looking for insurance, this sort of geographic, getting rid of the geographical boundaries when it comes to buying and looking for insurance. I don't know if factcheck.org has looked into that to see if that is actually a good viable option for health care reform.

ROBINSON: We haven't really looked into across state lines kind of thing.

LEMON: OK. We could like that. We want to know if that's true.

ROBINSON: OK.

LEMON: So do some checking for us. You know, I know that really you're doing the facts behind it. So if you can find out that because that's one of the issues that people are concerned about as well. And I also would like to talk about whether it's fair or not fair for, you know, private or the insurance companies to go up against the government if that is unfair competition in some way, Lori.

ROBINSON: OK.

LEMON: So if you could do some checking on that for us, we would appreciate it and we'll get you back on, OK?

ROBINSON: OK. Sure.

LEMON: And we appreciate you sitting around and listening to the president and then checking the facts for us. Factcheck.org, all right. Lori Robertson.

So again we are following all the town halls that have been happening all across the country today from the east to the Midwest, out to the west, all over. You saw the president was in Grand Junction. I was at one that they billed as the biggest town hall on health care in (INAUDIBLE) people showed up and we spoke to a lot of people here who had some questions and concern for the president and also for the administration. We're going to continue our coverage here and tell you what they said earlier at these town halls and also more from the president's Q&A today in Grand Junction, Colorado.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Health care reform, health care reform. That's what's on everyone's mind, including the president who had a health care reform town hall today in Grand Junction, Colorado. One here today where I am in Atlanta at Centennial Olympic Park. Time now for your feedback.

Here's what's cndebs says "the president is trying to scare the insured now to get support. It won't work. Just remove the public option, the rest is negotiable." Here's what Peace activist said, "you have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness unless you have a pre-existing condition or can afford health insurance."

Log on to twitter, Facebook, MySpace, I-report.com. We'll get your questions and your answers on the air.

What they said today at the Atlanta rally. That and more when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: So you heard him right here on CNN. President Obama is turning up the heat on his had health care reform push but plenty of people are pushing right back right here in Atlanta. Centennial Olympic Park was overtaken by ralliers (ph) gathering for an event billed as America's health care town hall. We heard lots of voices but only one chorus, hands off my health care.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONNY CAMPER: I started with all the bailout money. It's just ballooned from there. You know, they keep spending money, spending money and spending money. It's going to come to an end. You know, the best thing to do is to nip it right now and let's go back to the constitution and let's think America first.

LEMON (on camera): So you said it started with the bailout money. For you it's not partisan because it was introduced during the Bush administration.

SARA CAMPER: It's not partisan. No.

DONNY CAMPER: No, it's not partisan. I did not agree with George Bush on all the bailouts. It's not partisan at all.

SARA CAMPER: That's what capitalism is all about. You know Let's let the free market take care of it. If we keep bailing out, bailing out and bailing out, where does it end? It just keeps going on and on.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: And when it comes to health care, there is so much out there, so much to cover and an hour really isn't enough. So you make sure you check out cnn.com/healthcare. Again, CNN.com/healthcare. We feature on-going coverage of the health care debate, a list of town hall meetings from across the country and how health care reform might affect you, no matter where you live.

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LEMON: You know, we have been talking about health care reform, not easy to reform health care when on top of a recession because recession is really squeezing everything, especially college students, squeezing some right out of the classroom and CNN's Sandra Endo has tonight's "Money and Main Street."

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SANDRA ENDO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Sophomore Zakiya Williams found a perfect fit at Spellman College.

ZAKIYA WILLIAMS, SOPHOMORE, SPELMAN COLLEGE: This place was meant for me.

ENDO: When the tough economy hit her and her family hard, she packed her bags ready to drop out.

WILLIAMS: I wasn't able to get loans. Neither were my parents. ENDO: It's a familiar story at colleges across the country, but especially at historically black colleges and universities where in some cases up to 95 percent of students rely on financial aids to fund their education. President Barack Obama has moved to increase financial aid with stimulus and budget funds, but still many black colleges expect enrollment rates to keep shrinking as families and students struggle in the economic downturn.

BEVERLY TATUM, PRESIDENT, SPELMAN COLLEGE: Many students want to come. Will they be able to afford to come?

ENDO: Since 2004, $238 million of federal funding was earmarked annually for historically black colleges. And in the last two years, those institutions also benefited from an extra $85 million each year under the college cost reduction act which ends in May of 2010. So those institutions may feel the squeeze even more.

CARLTON E. BROWN, PRESIDENT, CLARK ATLANTA UNIVERSITY: You're under resourced. We try to keep our costs as low as possible. That means our margins are always very tight?

ENDO: In the Atlanta area alone, Morehouse College alone laid off 25 adjunct professors. Spellman is eliminating 35 jobs next year and Clark Atlanta University budget ax fell with 70 professors and 30 staff members let go. The White House budget office says President Obama's budget calls for a five percent increase in permanent funding for historically black colleges.

MICHAEL LOMAX, CEO, UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND: We're saying you're moving in the right direction but in these tough times, not far enough.

ENDO: For Zakiya Williams, a scholarship came through at the last minute and she says the struggle to stay at a historically black college was worth it.

WILLIAMS: I was completely relieved and now I'm focusing on my studies.

ENDO: Sandra Endo, CNN, Atlanta.

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LEMON: All right. We have been following the health care town halls all over the country today, including the president in the one right here in Atlanta. Your comments are very important to us.

And here's one I found very interesting. Change mom says "hands off my health care is not realistic. Someone will always have their hands on if you have insurance. We have no control now." We want to thank you, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or i-report.com, we'll get your questions, your comments, your concerns on the air.

I'm Don Lemon, right here in Atlanta. I'll see you back here at 10:00 p.m. Eastern.

Christiane Amanpour reports "Generation Islam" begins right now.

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