Opposition Grows Against Obama’s Health Care Reforms
The New York Times covered several of the guest appearances on the Sunday news-talk shows.
Sen. John McCain was interviewed on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” He said that a public plan would cause many Americans to lose their private health insurance.
“Certainly if you have it, you shouldn’t have to lose it,” McCain said in reference to private insurance. “But under the president’s plan, you would have to lose it in my view because of the government option. I believe that one of the fundamentals for any agreement would be that the president abandon the government option.”
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-NY, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that President Obama “believes strongly in a public option.”
On the same program, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-UT, predicted that “tens of millions of people will go into the government plan” against their will.
“The costs of the government plan will be astronomical,” he said. “Keep in mind, in Medicare they pay doctors 20 percent less, they pay hospitals 30 percent less. Guess where those costs are transferred? They’re transferred to the people who have private health insurance, and the average private health insurance policy goes up about $1,800 a year just to pay for what the government fails to pay for in their current government plan.”
McCain has rejected the term “death panels”, but he said that the language in some bills would have created boards to decide what procedures would be allowed for the terminally sick and dying.
“Doesn’t that open the door to the possibility of rationing?” he asked.
