Working vacation

Health care, Yellowstone on Obama's agenda for today's visit

President Barack Obama's visit to Montana will be too rushed to get the full value of a family vacation in Big Sky Country, but he and his family will visit Yellowstone National Park in between stops in the Rockies to talk about health care reform.

Despite the national attention on health care, a large focus of the president's swing through the West is on encouraging people to visit national parks. In addition to his stop in Yellowstone, President Obama will also visit the Grand Canyon next week.

Obama and his family are scheduled to arrive on Air Force One at Gallatin Field Airport in Bozeman at 12:30 p.m. today. The town hall is scheduled to begin 20 minutes later.

According to the White House, the president plans to discuss "how under health insurance reform, insurance companies will be prohibited from dropping or watering down insurance coverage for those who become seriously ill."

In addition to several hundred people who will be able to attend the town-hall meeting, as many as 2,000 protesters are expected to converge on the airport to hold a "Tea Party" demonstration against health-care reform and government spending.

The Obamas plan to spend part of Saturday in Yellowstone. Air Force One will leave the West Yellowstone Airport at 2:35 p.m. and head to Grand Junction, Colo., for another town-hall meeting on health care, this time on "eliminating unlimited out-of-pocket costs such as co-pays and deductibles."

The Grand Canyon and Phoenix are other stops on Obama's swing through the West.