The nation is in the midst of a high-stakes debate about health-care reform.

And the reaction to proposals to overhaul the health-care system have been intense, to say the least, at town hall meetings held this summer.

Policy makers want and need to hear from the public. I'm confident they would rather have a calm discussion than opinions yelled in their faces, as has too often been the case so far.
So here's your chance. Let's start a reasoned dialogue on the issues.

People in the San Joaquin Valley should demand no less. The outcome of health-care reform could affect thousands here, where one out of four people is without health insurance.

How to expand health insurance coverage to the uninsured -- and pay for it -- is at the crux of the health-reform debate. Should the government create a "public option" governmental insurance program or a nonprofit cooperative system to compete with private insurance companies? That's just one of the points of contention.

Now is the time to discuss health-care reform. The chance may never happen again. Share your thoughts. What's the best health-reform idea you've heard so far? What worries you most about the proposals being kicked around? The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-partisan health-care research organization, is one place to look for information about those issues and others and to keep track of the debate.

The debate is not only for the 25% of us who don't have coverage, but for the rest of us who are fortunate to have health insurance and want to know what health-reform could do to it.

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