Cyber Town Hall Falls Back To Earth

President Obama on Wednesday fought for his health care agenda and electronic medical records during an online town hall that was streamed from Annandale, Va. But those in the room may have had the biggest impact on the conversation.

In a departure from past Q&A sessions with netizens, the president took questions through the broadcast text-messaging service Twitter. Alternatively, citizens could submit comments through WhiteHouse.gov or upload videos through the commercial, free Web site YouTube.

However, it was a live audience member in Virginia who posed perhaps the most compelling question. A teary-eyed woman suffering from a recurrence of renal cancer - and living on food stamps - politely asked Obama, "How am I going to make it nine years until I'm on social security [when, today] I have a new tumor?"

Obama, in that immovable calm, said, "Come over here. . . . I don't want you to feel like you're alone here." He hugs the woman. "We're going to try to help you out . . . [and] find out what we can do within existing law."

Viewers watched on WhiteHouse.gov, and, for the first time, the White House allowed Facebook also to air the live broadcast.

Throughout much of the roughly hour-long meeting, Obama focused on aspects of his plan that would add coverage without adding to the nation's deficits.

"This is going to be a marketplace that would allow you to one-stop shop for health insurance," Obama said. "None of these plans would be allowed to deny you coverage on the basis of a pre-existing condition."

"I know the biggest question on everyone's mind is - 'How do we pay for this?'. . . This can't add to our deficits. It's got to be deficit neutral for the next 10 years. . . . [This] doesn't involve more spending. It just involves smarting spending," he added.

Elsewhere on the Internet, bloggers were rallying support for their own specific questions - and their own agendas.

The Foundry, a blog maintained by the conservative Heritage Foundation, noted, "Judging by Obama's previous track record of skirting the hard follow-up questions, it remains to be seen how much open debate or tough questioning the president will face on his health agenda and its potential impact on Americans. That's why you also should sound off on www.FixHealthCarePolicy.com to make sure your questions and thoughts about truly reforming the health care system are heard and seen by the general public."

That site, also run by Heritage, urges Americans to upload videos that describe how they would improve the health care system.

A patient advocacy blog, called- e-Patients.net, reasoned, "If enough of us ask, maybe we will get a verbal commitment from Obama to support our health data rights.

Here are a couple of twitter examples:

Obama, will #hcreform support my right to access and use #myhealthdata ? #WHHCQ

Hi Prez Obama! Will #hcreform support humans' access to their own health data, kinda like how they access their pet's data? #WHHCQ"