“Now we need to finish the job,” President Barack Obama said during his State of the Union address Tuesday night. “The question is: How?”

It should be no surprise that the President, subsequent to a brief introductory reflection, launched into the intertwined matters of sequestration and deficit reduction — with a focus on how they impact healthcare before addressing other sectors of the U.S. economy.

Among the priorities that the “sudden, harsh, arbitrary” sequestration cuts would “devastate,” the President listed medical research alongside education, energy, the military, and of course, the broader economic recovery.

“That’s why Democrats, Republicans, business leaders, and economists have already said that these cuts … are a really bad idea,” Obama said.

The President continued that some in Congress have suggested preserving the defense budget by reducing Medicare and Social Security, in addition to education and job training.

[See also: Rubio asks: Where's Obama's plan to save Medicare?]

“That idea is even worse,” he said. “Yes, the biggest driver of our long-term debt is the rising cost of healthcare for an aging population. And those of us who care deeply about programs like Medicare must embrace the need for modest reforms.”

Not doing so would put other programs, “investments we need for our children … secure retirement for future generations,” at risk, the President said. Which is why, when it comes to Medicare, he continued somewhat vaguely, “I’m prepared to enact reforms that will achieve the same amount of healthcare savings by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.”

Touting the cost-savings his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has already achieved, President Obama proposed reducing “taxpayer subsidies to prescription drug companies,” asking more from wealthy seniors, and bending the cost curve by “changing the way our government pays for Medicare” to reward care outcomes.

“And I am open to additional reforms from both parties, so long as they don’t violate the guarantee of a secure retirement,” President Obama said. “Our government shouldn’t make promises we cannot keep — but we must keep the promises we’ve already made.”

Which brings Americans back to that question: How?

That won’t likely be answered anytime soon, particular to the matter of healthcare or the other issues he addressed, such as tax reform, gun control, clean energy, defending American freedom, education, immigration, and information technology.