Originally created to serve the poorest and sickest among us the Medicaid program has grown dramatically but still doesn't include the kind of flexibility that states need to provide better health care for the poor and disadvantaged.

Under President Obama's new health care law Medicaid will become a very different health coverage program than first envisioned.

As a single-payer advocate I believe that at the end of the day if a state goes forward and passed an effective single-payer program it will demonstrate that you can provide quality health care to every man woman and child in a more cost-effective way.

I fully support a national health care program for the U.S.

When the Veterans Affairs Department implemented a program to provide home-based health care to veterans with multiple chronic conditions - many of the system's most expensive patients to treat - they received astounding results.

I believe the most important aspect of Medicare is not the structure of the program but the guarantee to all Americans that they will have high quality health care as they get older.

So in Europe they're cutting people's retirement and health benefits. And that's what we want to avoid from happening. They're raising taxes entering a recession. That's the kind of economic program that President Obama has put in place.

I teach one semester a year and this year I'm just teaching one course during that semester a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion.

Many health care providers particularly physicians in rural and urban areas are leaving the Government programs because of inadequate reimbursement rates.

And some of what we're doing in Government even now some of the welfare reform programs that are helping lone mothers come into work are based on things that were very new under the Labour Government in the eighties.