McConnell: Town Halls Provided ‘Real Clarity’ on Health Reform

Continuing what has fast become a GOP trend, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday called on Democrats to scrap their current health reform plans and start anew. The public’s August reaction to the Democrats’ strategy, McConnell said, demands nothing less.

The American people are asking us to start over. They want reforms, but they want the right reforms, not some grand scheme that increases the national debt, expands the federal government, raises taxes, cuts seniors’ benefits, and forces Americans off the plans they currently have and like. They want reforms that work within the system we’ve got.

Unmentioned, of course, is the role that Republican scare tactics played to incite the sometimes-vitriolic public reaction that marked the recess. Indeed, after trumpeting the false idea that the Democrats’ proposals would promote abortion, pull the plug on grandma and create Beijing on the Potomac, Republicans are now pointing to the inevitable public outcry against those phantom provisions as reason to kill the legislation.

As a political strategy to deny the Democrats a legislative win, it’s thus far been effective. But as a strategy for  improving the nation’s troubled health care system, it’s entirely substance free. If only there were more of a public outcry over that …