Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said he believed the Democratic plan to overhaul the nation’s health care system was “in serious trouble” and threw cold water on a bipartisan plan in the Senate to create a national insurance cooperative.
McConnell, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” said he believed Americans were far too skeptical of the government running their health care and that a cooperative, while less radical than a government-run insurance program, would still go too far and would be “unacceptable” to most in the Senate GOP.
“It would have government money in it, and it would be guaranteed by the government,” McConnell said. “It’s just going to be a kind of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.”
Health care reform now hinges on the work of a bipartisan group of six senators, led by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., trying to put together a bill that is more moderate than two other partisan proposals.
The group has come up with a proposal to pay for health insurance reform by taxing expensive insurance plans, but McConnell said that idea was “going to be controversial as well.”
Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that he was “open” to an insurance co-op instead of a government-run plan, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who also appeared on the show, hinted he would at least look at such an option.
Durbin signaled that the Democrats would only wait so long for Republicans to agree to some kind of health care deal before they pass a bill without any GOP support, which is possible under Senate rules.
“If it reaches the point where we cannot reach a bipartisan agreement, I don’t want to see health care reform fail,” Durbin said. “We only get a chance once in a political lifetime to do something.”
Republicans and Democrats sparred over the heated town hall meetings that have been taking place around the country as lawmakers try to talk to their constituents about health care.
Durbin said a raucous meeting in the district of Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, showed that the “screaming groups” were “clearly being orchestrated and these folks have instructions. They come down from a Texas lobbyist in Washington.”
McConnell said it was impossible to determine whether people were really being handed instructions to disrupt the town hall meetings.
“I suspect that a lot of these people who are coming to these meetings are elderly people who are concerned about half-a-trillion-dollar cut in Medicare to pay, not to make Medicare sustainable, but to start a new program for other citizens.”
McConnell added, “It’s not just the town hall meetings; all the public polls indicate that support for what the administration is trying to do on health care is declining.”
