The most important question is not whether Mr. Obama will support legalization of marijuana it is whether, if congress passes a decriminalization/legalization bill, will he sign it? Those of us in favor of legalization should work from the bottom up. It has started at the state level. Next Congress.

Of course they pass their cost on. That is the point. Employer supported insurance adds cost to every product we produce for businesses that provide it. That takes additional money out of everyone's pocket and puts those businesses at a competitive disadvantage to companies in other countries where health care is either universal or not provided at all. Labor cost is the number one reason companies move there operations out of this country.
You still didn't address what to do about uninsurable people.

Mass transit is only expensive because we try to pay for it after we have paid for building roads and highways, installing traffic controls, paying police to patrol them, paying for fuel exploration, refinement, transportation, delivery and marketing, paying for our own automobiles and trucks, insurance etc, etc, Transport systems that get their power from the conveyance system are more efficient. Drivers only cause confusion ,congestion and accidents. The technology is already available to build personal automated transportation systems. Continuing to invest in automobile infrastructure denies the fact that in not to many years we will be out of space and out of air if we don't change now.

That's like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound and saying your healed. If your employer gets to choose the insurance provider how is there competition? Who pays while your unemployed? How do you afford to pay while your unemployed? Who covers all the uninsurable people like elderly, chronically ill, disabled? How does that save the employer from passing on the cost of insurance to the customers? Health insurance companies are extortionists not service providers.

Since infrastructure investment is part of the new administration's plan for economic recovery and the bail out of the auto industry is in the news I would like to suggest beginning to move investment in roads and highways to investment in other modes of transportation.
There is no reason not to begin developing a better high speed rail infrastructure using rights of way on current interstate highways.
In urban and suburban environments Personal Automated Transport systems offer a lot of promise in efficient transportation. They require no drivers, can pick up and deliver both people and cargo to locations quickly efficiently and safely with a smaller footprint, less energy consumption, and lower cost.
I recommend as a start we close off central Washington DC to automobile and truck traffic and install a PAT system there. It would be a tourist attraction, improve the environment, provide an example of a government looking to the future, show its practicality, and have the added benefit of improving security. If local workers were hired to build it and operate it would also help a very challenged community prosper.

I am fortunate in that so far my job seems to be safe. That could change.
It is a must to stop relying on employers for health insurance. I advocate a single payer system. The cost of employer provided healthcare gets rolled into the cost of every product and service produced by companies who provide this service. (It is not a benefit.)
Worse, it ties a worker to an employer in a way that no amount of salary could. This prevents workers from marketing their skills effectively and brings down working class incomes in general. At the same time, the cost to the worker keeps going up limiting their real spending cash which of course has a negative affect on the econonmy. I currently pay nearly twenty percent of my salary for health and dental coverage for my wife and I, in an employer provided plan when copays are included. We are healthy.
Anyone who has been out of work with families to support knows the worst part of being out of work is not lack of income it is lack of coverage.

This country needs to renew a significant commitment to physical fitness in the young. When school budgets get tight the first progams to go are physical eduaction.

I'm not referring to organized competitive sports. Everyone cannot participate in those activities as it requires a certain level of skill. I'm mean physical exercise in school for everyone. Not recess, but organized physical activities.

When I was young President Kennedy initiated a physical fitness achievement program and all physical eduacation programs were encouraged to participate.

To have a sharp mind one needs a fit body.