There are more than a 1,000 miles between Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Washington D.C. In terms health reform, this past weekend, the distance between the two cities seemed even greater.

In Minneapolis, the president spoke (transcript) before a lively crowd of 15,000 supporters who were fired up and ready to go fix health care. Back in the District of Columbia, the people who brought you the anti-tax tea parties and town hall tantrums held a different sort of health care rally on the National Mall.

Looking only at these extremes, as Politico does, it's easy to make the case that bipartisanship is a myth, nothing more than a necessary charade to mask unbridgeable differences.

But as the recent Washington Post/ABC News poll shows, there's a lot of America that falls between Minneapolis and D.C., and for the people living there, the issues of health reform are not clear so cut. The majority know we need reform, but they're afraid of losing what they've got. They like Medicare but they're worried about government involvement in health care. They support a public health insurance option, but seem more likely to support reform without it. The list goes on.

The paradoxes of public opinion on health care reflect the complexity of the issue as well as the challenges faced by proponents of reform. As the Big Lebowski would say, "It's a complicated case, [health reform]. Lotta ins. Lotta outs. And a lotta strands to keep in my head, man."

In seeking to regain control of the health care debate, President Obama has done well to emphasize the benefits of reform and the perils of inaction for people like the Dude.

He used his weekly address on Saturday, to highlight a new report from the Treasury Department which estimates that around half of all Americans under 65 will lose their health coverage at some point over the next ten years.

In an interview with 60 Minutes that aired Sunday Night, Obama took ownership of the health reform and the goals it's meant to accomplish:

Look, I have tried as much as possible in the plan that we've designed to make sure that the best ideas are out there. I have no interest in having a bill get passed that fails. That doesn't work. You know, I intend to be President for a while, and once this bill passes, I own it. And if people look and say, "You know what? This hasn't reduced my costs. My premiums are still going up 25 percent, insurance companies are still jerking me around," I'm the one who's going to be held responsible. So I have every incentive to get this right. And to the extent that I can find partners on the other side of the aisle who also want to get it right, they're going to have me right there beside them.

On whether Americans who like what they have will be able to keep it, Obama made a guarantee:

The guarantee is that if you lose your job or you change jobs or you want to start your own business, you'll be able to get coverage. You know, Steve, your doctor could be elderly and decide he wants to retire to Florida, and I can't force him to keep on treating you. So they're going to be changes that would have been taking place anyway.

But the security we're providing is to say that if you've got health insurance on the job, you're a lot more likely to keep it if we can control costs and your employer is not seeing a 48 percent increase in premiums, like a small business owner wrote to me just three days ago. He said his premiums for his employees had jumped 48 percent. He said, "I don't know what to do. At some point I'm just gonna have to stop providing insurance for my employees." Now that's happening more and more.

As for how to pay for reform, Obama repeated his pledge that health reform will not increase the deficit "by a dime."

Well, here's how we do it. We spend over $2 trillion on health care every year. So we spend more per person on health care in this country than any other country by far. Over one-and-a-half times more. Thousands of dollars more per person.

So if we can just make some small changes that make the system more efficient -- the waste and abuse, this the money that's already being spent that's not making people healthier -- that money can go to provide a better deal for those without insurance. And, over time, can actually reduce the cost to those who already have health insurance.

With Senate Finance scheduled to begin marking up its portion of legislation next week, the American people need to be remind of these basic facts of reform. Legislative sausage-making isn't pretty, but the alternative of doing nothing is even worse.