President Barack Obama is set to speak at a joint session of Congress Wednesday night where he is expected to make the case of why reform is imperative.

Two senators who will be in the audience recently answered our viewers' questions about what they want to see in any legislation for 9NEWS' YOUR SHOW.

Sens. Mark Udall (D-Colorado) and John McCain (R-Arizona) were on YOUR SHOW on Sunday.

While both think health care reform is necessary, they remain at odds over how to achieve it.

Specifically, they disagree on the role in the federal government in getting the cost savings that everyone wants.

The conversation on YOUR SHOW focused in part around what's called the public option, which seeks to create competition for private insurance companies.

"If you advantage a public option in such a way that it puts the private insurance sector in a position they can't sustain, that's not the appropriate way. I won't support a public option for example that's based on Medicare reimbursement rates," Udall said. "That's just a prescription to continue the system that we now have. There may be other ways to inject this competition into the insurance marketplace but that's really where the nub of this is: how do we get competition that drives down costs and expenses so this is a more affordable system?"

Critics say the public option is the first step toward government-run health care.

"When you say that you're going to have a quote public option that competes with the private corporations, the health insurers, you're either going to have one or two things happen," McCain said. "One, you're going to have another competitor and we already have 1,500 health insurers or you're going to have a government run system that has an advantage over private health insurance companies and they drive them out of business."

One of the first orders of business for Congress will be to resolve the three different health care measures the Democrats have passed out of three different committees. In the Senate, they are still waiting on a plan being crafted by a bipartisan group and may have something by next week.

For more on our interview with Udall and McCain, visit www.9news.com/yourshow.