I agree with just about everyone in the reform debate when they say 'If you like what you have you should be able to keep it.' But the truth is that none of the health reform bills making their way through Congress actually delivers on that promise.

It's correct that I wanted health reform to do more to create choices and promote competition.

It is hard to miss the irony in the fact that the very same week that Republicans were publicly heralding Congressman Paul Ryan's plan to inject market forces into the American health care system they were crafting a budget deal to strip them from the health reform law.

The reality is that the special interest groups that have lobbied against Free Choice Vouchers object to any measure that would empower employees to have a say in their health benefits because it begins to erode their power in the current health care system.

Without Free Choice Vouchers there is little in the health reform law that discourages employers from increasingly passing the burden of health care costs onto their employees.

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.

For the amount of money that the country is going to spend this year on health care you can go out and hire a doctor for every seven families in the US and pay the doctor almost $230 000 a year to cover them.

Fixing health care and fixing the economy are two sides of the same coin.

It's time to look beyond the budget ax to assure access to health care for all. It's time to look for bipartisan solutions to the problems we can tackle today and to work together for tomorrow - building a health care system that works for all Americans.