Here are President Obama’s remarks laying out his three key points about health care reform, at today’s Rio Rancho Town Hall. He made the remarks in response to a question from the audience about health care and single payer systems.

Here are my notes, and you can see the entire transcript posted by Democracy for New Mexico.

1.       Control Costs across the system.

If we insured everyone under current system, we couldn’t afford it.  Medicaid and Medicare costs are the single biggest driver to deficits and national debt, as well as social security, defense, and interest on the national debt. These are the lion’s share of the national budget. … Most of what’s driving us into debt is health care.

Ways we can drive down costs:

Prevention and wellness programs, by reimbursing providers for helping people stay well.

Medical technology to reduce error rates. Ensure electronic medical records. There are simple things we can do to save us money.

2.       It’s important to provide coverage for all people.

If people don’t have Insurance, they go to the emergency room. Every family who has insurance is subsidizing people who go to the emergency room to an average of about $900 per year.

3.      Work with the system we have.

On the question of, why not have a single payer system? For those of you who don’t know, medicare is sort of like a single payer system. The idea is you don’t have insurance companies as middle men. The government  pays doctors and nurses. If I were starting a system from scratch, maybe-and moving there makes sense.

The only problem is that we aren’t starting from scratch. We have a tradition of employer based health care. The system is already in place. We don’t want a huge disruption, going into health care reform, by trying to reinvent one sixth of the economy. So under my plan, if you don’t have health care or are highly unsatisfied with health care, lets set up a public plan to give you health care. If you are satisfied, stay with what you’ve got.

I have to work with congress to get this done. I’m confident that they’ll produce a bill before the August recess. It may not get us everything we want, but I believe it will get us on the path.