President Barack Obama will talk about healthcare when he addresses a joint session of Congress tonight. The speech will air at 5pm, Pacific Time Zone, on all major networks and online.

This is a comparatively rare event. Presidents have only spoken to a joint session of Congress 47 times outside of State of the Union addresses.

Laying the groundwork for the speech, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said yesterday in a radio address, “President Obama will make the case for what is at stake for the American people in this debate, and he’ll provide a clear direction for what a true reform plan is: a plan that will bring stability and security to Americans who have insurance, and help those who don’t get coverage they can afford. He’ll discuss what health insurance reform means – and what it doesn’t mean – for all Americans.”

There are five committees working on healthcare reform bills in the House and Senate. The House tri-committee bill is known as H.R. 3200, which has been quoted regularly and conservatives falsely claimed included the now infamous “Death Panels.”

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee wrote a reform bill too, but in the Senate, all eyes are on Senator Max Baucus’ Finance Committee, which has yet to release their more bi-partisan effort.

Sebelius said, “We’re entering a new phase in this important debate. Now is the time to begin pulling together the bills that have been written and the solutions that have been proposed to create a final product that reforms our health insurance system and offers families the security and stability they need.”

Thus far, the President has acted as the marketing arm of the healthcare policy reform movement in Washington, D.C. The President does not have a healthcare reform bill of his own, just a set of principles on which he believes healthcare reform should be based. His role has been shepherding bills in the House and Senate and guiding the national conversation.

Lately, both national and local opinion leaders have even called on the President to present his own bill and take charge of the debate again. Tonight, he will not announce another bill, but he will be putting more of his political capital on the line for healthcare reform.

See you at 5pm.