We, the audience who will watch President Barack Obama's congressional address on health-care reform tonight, make a simple request of the senators and representatives who will sit in on the speech. Taking a cue from race car drivers and professional golfers, lawmakers should decorate themselves with the logos of their corporate benefactors.

The president already knows the bought-and-paid-for lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats — who are standing in front of serious solutions to the crisis of U.S. health care. It sure would help the rest of us sort out the goats from the sheep. This way we'll better see through the conspiracy claims and weak vows of compromise made by anti-reformers.

Oh, we can reason, they don't really believe the overblown hype, they're just protecting Big Medicine, writers of big campaign contribution checks.

After an August of misinformation and fear spread by his opponents, it's time for Obama to step up in September. Tonight's speech should lay out the challenges the nation faces in stark terms. Our health-care system teeters dangerously close to major problems involving risings costs, employers straining to cover employees and swelling ranks of uninsured. Health insurers already employ many of the tactics predicted to exist under a robust public option, namely rationing and/or denying care.

The United States, with its for-profit piecemeal system that leaves too many citizens behind, sits alone among the developed world.

We can do better. For the sake of our economic future in a competitive world, we must do better. This is the message the president should deliver.

A public option to compete with private health insurance is one of the proposals the president has suggested. The benefits are obvious enough. A public option will begin to un-tether employment and health care, an alliance that invariably frays in times of economic trouble. It will provide some competition to private insurers, most whom hold virtual monopolies in their respective markets.

A public option falls short of what's needed — a robust agreement that health care is a right and that coverage ought not be denied based on the vagaries of the market.

A concise review of the stakes of doing nothing (or next to nothing) presented by Obama will put to shame the anti-reformers bought and paid for by the health-care lobby. It will call out the silliness of scare tactics such as death panels. It will draw a clear line between shouting and calm.

The stakes are serious. Given its performance in August, the opposition is not. (Well, it is serious about using whatever means necessary to kill health-care reform.)

Obama's foes can trace their lineage back across several Democratic administrations. Franklin D. Roosevelt and his plan for Social Security had its detractors. So did Lyndon B. Johnson and his plan for Medicare. Harry Truman and his unsuccessful push for universal health care was bitterly opposed. In each case, the opposition looks worse through the lens of history. In the case of two extremely popular government programs — Medicare and Social Security — foes look downright pathetic. As a test, try to find an elected or electable politician willing to lead the charge against either's demise.

Our charge is not providing for economic security for the elderly; Roosevelt accomplished that.

Our charge is not basic health care for the elderly; Johnson can claim that gold star.

Our charge is to extend basic coverage to all Americans, regardless of employment status or economic station. Obama has taken on this challenge. Good. Now it is up to him to sell it tonight.