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Jonathan Gruber, professor of economics at MIT and director of the health care reform program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, talks about his new book, Health Care Reform: What It Is, Why It's Necessary, How It Works, illustrated by Nathan Schreiber, explaining health care reform. 

The group charged with overhauling the state’s Medicaid program meets Tuesday to approve a long list of measures to reduce costs and improve care.

Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, discusses his book and offers his take on how to improve our healthcare system.

District courts across the country are passing judgement on the Obama administration's health care reform legislation. Yesterday Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled the "individual mandate," that requires everyone to purchase health insurance, was unconstitutional. He says the government overstretched its powers under the Constitution's "Commerce Clause," which allows Congress to regulate individual conduct that affects the economy. Judge Hudson's ruling opens up the debate further, but how will it play in higher courts? 

Virginia judge Henry E. Hudson ruled yesterday that the insurance mandate in the new health care legislation was unconstitutional. But President Obama seems unflappable in the face of the decision. Why? 

It's A Free Country and The Brian Lehrer Show bring you the fall election series 30 Issues in 30 Days. We will explore one issue every day until election day - issues of relevance to the NY, NJ and CT elections and the national midterm congressional races. This week, we'll be looking into the issue of healthcare reform. Here is what our research found the two candidates for Governor say about the issue.

Nancy Metcalf, senior editor at Consumer Reports, looks at changes to health care insurance going into effect now as a result of federal legislation.

President Obama signed his historic health care reform bill into law back in March, and now, six months later, three key provisions in the bill take effect: 

• There will no longer be a lifetime cap on health insurance.
• Parents can now keep their child under their plan until they are 26 years old.
• Insurance companies can no longer refuse coverage for children with pre-existing conditions.

Jim Knickman, CEO and president of the non-profit New York State Health Foundation, talks about how uninsured New Yorkers can benefit from federal health reform.

Republicans are implementing different strategies in different states to challenge key parts of health care reform, specifically the part says, if you don't have insurance, you must buy it by 2014. In Missouri, there will be a ballot in the primaries today, and in Virginia, a judge has allowed the state's attorney general to file suit in court. 

Kicking a political opponent off the ballot is a common, if unseemly, thing for campaigns to be publicly involved in. To most voters and observers it connotes a sense that archaic election rules are limiting voters choices, rather than letting issues and ideas be the deciding factor.

But, all's fair in primaries and mid-term elections.

Today, Democratic Rep. Mike McMahon's campaign announced they're challenging the petitions of John Tabacco, an Independence Party member who is trying to run for congress on the IP line. That's a line McMahon desparately needs in the Republican-leaning district, especially since the Working Families Party line is being denied him because he voted against Obama's health care reform bill.

In McMahon's announcement, he said 402 out of 678 signatures collected by Tabacco were invalid.

To deal with the possible public-relations blowback, here's how McMahon explained the move:

“Out of respect for Mr. Tabacco’s efforts to run for this seat, I welcomed the opportunity to sit down with him to discuss any issues he had with me running on the Independence Party line. It was my goal to see if we could find some common ground in this race or in the future. However, I do believe that it is the obligation of every candidate for elective office to meet the minimum basic requirements established by law for campaign filings and I don’t feel they have been met in Mr. Tabacco’s case. I do, however, look forward to working with him on our issues of shared concern that affect the people of Staten Island and Brooklyn."

The McMahon campaign is prepared in coming days for their hearing with the Board of Elections in anticipation of Mr. Tabacco being removed from the Independence Party line before the case is scheduled to appear in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

A new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that medical students who graduate from Historically Black Colleges and Universities are more likely to practice primary care medicine in low-income communities, the exact area of care most needed in the country today. By 2020, six years after health care overhaul kicks in, there will be 35 million newly insured Americans, but a projected shortage of up to 100,000 primary care doctors. HBCUs like Morehouse, Howard and Meharry Medical College – the top ranked schools in the study – may be helping prevent the problem by training students to work in underserved communities upon graduation.

In the course of reporting last week's massive health care overhaul, Todd Zwillich came across a strange detail in the $25 billion legislation. He asks Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham about "black liquor" — a mysterious substance that affects many people in Graham's home state (even though he'd never heard of it).

Health care reform is now the law of the land, and after the months of protracted debate, you'd think there couldn't be any details left to tease out, but our Washington correspondent, Todd Zwillich, discovered that lawmakers never once mentioned a $25 billion detail in the bill, pertaining to a mysteriously named substance: black liquor. 

Republicans love to accuse President Obama of being "drunk on spending." And when I saw that $25 billion of the recently-passed health care overhaul bill was financed with something called "black liquor," I thought Democrats had finally decided to shed all pretense and live up to the GOP's epithets.

I initally thought (even hoped) that black liquor was some clandestine toxic Tennessee moonshine, or a minority-owned spirits concern facing pay-back for wronging a powerful congressman. No such luck: It turns out black liquor is a merely a dark, burnable byproduct of the pulp-making process, a fuel that paper companies across the South can burn in their factories to cut costs.

The president was in Iowa as the Senate and House approved the changes to his overhaul bill.

It could go down as the defining moment of his presidency. Though he was doubted and abandoned by supporters, President Obama was able to twist arms to pass health care reform, signing the bill into law on Tuesday. Today, he returns to the Iowa, the state where he first rolled out his vision of a health care overhaul as a candidate. What will be the lasting narrative of Obama's time in office, and will health care reform play a role?

• HEALTH CARE TAKEOUT: Health care reform was signed into law yesterday and Democrats were jubilant. Takeaway Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich details the ceremony, down to the 22 souvenir pens and the vice president's salty language.
• MONEY TAKEOUT: Section 2572 of the recently-passed health care bill requires that chain restaurants post calorie counts on their menus. Louise Story, Wall Street and financial reporter for The New York Times, talks to us about how restaurants and consumers might respond.

UPDATED 7:00 p.m. Arwa Gunja here on the night shift, putting the final touches on tomorrow's show. Takeaway producer Anna Sale is in Haiti all this week, and tomorrow she’ll talk about how local Haitians have been an extending a helping hand to those in need. She’s profiling a young Haitian man who has been regularly visiting a hospital to help an orphaned toddler  (whom he had never met before) badly injured after the earthquake.

We’ll also check in with Andrea Bernstein, the director of The Takeaway’s Transportation Nation project. She spoke with Ronald Simms, the deputy of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). It may come as a surprise that only a third of America’s neighborhoods are actually affordable when you factor in the cost of transportation.

And we’re still following the latest with Google’s pull out of mainland China. Tomorrow we’re asking listeners what is more important in THEIR lives: Google or China? If you look around your house, how many products are made in China? Which could you more easily give up? Leave a comment below or call in: 877-8-MY-TAKE (877-869-8253)

The passage of the health care reform bill is controversial for many reasons, but a main argument among critics is that it will cost more money than it will save. If signed into law as expected, the legislation would cost about $938 billion dollars. But, the Congressional Budget Office has said the bill will reduce federal deficits by an estimated $138 billion dollars in the next decade. We hear from one critic, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office and former economic advisor for Sen. John McCain when he was the Republican presidential candidate.