Today the AARP hosted a tele-town hall meeting between President Obama and AARP members. The crowd got the opportunity to voice their hopes and fears about health care reform, and Obama got the opportunity to explain what health reform means for seniors, their families, and their children.

Obama addressed a few key concerns:

Medicare benefits. "No one is talking about reducing Medicare benefits," assured the president. Reformers just want to reduce waste and strengthen the system. Obama also wants to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to close the doughnut hole in Part D. The doughnut hole is a coverage gap that requires some seniors to pay for the full price of their medications, up until they qualify for catastrophic coverage. One caller to the tele-town hall from Colorado, Sarah, said she was in the Part D doughnut hole, and would spend all of her savings within the next two years paying for her Parkinson's medication.

The cost of doing nothing. Obama pointed to statistics about the rising costs of health care. Even for those who do have insurance, premiums are rising faster than wages, making it more difficult for families to afford coverage. And no one is talking about fixing what works, Obama insisted, we just want to fix what doesn't work.

Health care choice and cost containment. One caller expressed concern about a "cost containment commission." Obama said that wasn't the proposal on the table -- right now Congress wants to create an Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC), consisting of health care experts, nurses, doctors, hospital administrators, that would use evidence to determine how to get the most value out of a health care dollar. Many people worried that the government was going to get between them and their doctor. Obama pointed out that right now, insurance companies are already getting between patients and their doctors. Coverage choices -- denying or allowing treatment -- are already being made by private insurers without any guidance as to whether or not they are making decisions that "work." IMAC would use evidence to determine what treatments work best and are the most cost effective. Obama said,

Now, the objective is to control costs, but it's not cost containment by just denying people care that they need. Instead, it's reducing costs by changing the incentives and the delivery system in health care so that people are not paying for care that they don't need.

End of life care. There's been a lot of talk lately about a provision in the House bill that would offer end of life counseling to seniors. Obama said that the bill would not force people to receive counseling, or even to create a living will, it would simply offer coverage for Medicare patients who wanted to ask questions about end-of-life care. The purpose of the provision is to empower people to make decisions about their own care, in a way that fits with their own faith, personal values and wishes. Obama said,

And if you don't want to fill out a living will, you don't have to, but it's actually a useful tool ... You don't want somebody else making those decisions for you.

...But, Mary, I just want to be clear: Nobody is going to be knocking on your door. Nobody is going to be telling you, you've got to fill one out. And certainly nobody is going to be forcing you to make a set of decisions on end-of-life care based on, you know, some bureaucratic law in Washington.

Obama compared the current health care debate to the debate over Medicare 40 years ago. He said that back then, critics levied the same arguments -- Medicare was "socialized medicine" and it would lead to "too much government involvement" in health care. Today, he countered, Medicare still provides good coverage to people, making them healthier and giving them more security.  Right now we have the opportunity to accomplish the same thing with health reform for all Americans. "We have to step up to the plate," said Obama.

Click here for a complete transcript of the event.