U.S. Rep. McCaul: Health care reform plan is a "monster"

You should be afraid.

That was U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul’s message on health care reform today when he spoke to several dozen residents of Westminster Manor, an Austin retirement community.

His staff passed out a jam-packed, multicolored chart (see above) that Republicans created about House Democrats’ health plan.

“You can see how convoluted” the plan is, said McCaul, an Austin Republican. “It’s a monster.”

He criticized the proposed legislation’s end-of-life counseling, though he distanced himself somewhat from other critics’ claims that government panels would make decisions on euthanasia. He called the proposed counseling mandatory; however, it would be optional.

“I’m always concerned when we have the government making life and death decisions for you, medical decisions for you, telling you you have to take end-of-life counseling,” McCaul said. “You’re going down a slippery slope — I’m not saying it’s euthanasia, but you’re going down a very slippery slope of how much power are we going to give the government in our lives in terms of our medical decisions and our health?”

And McCaul warned: “Don’t underestimate the power of Rahm Emanuel and Nancy Pelosi.”

The residents — some of whom called the congressman “Michael” and didn’t hesitate to point out when he wasn’t speaking directly into the microphone — lingered for coffee and pastries after the talk.

Patricia Hunter, 86, said she agreed with McCaul.

“This young man is very well-informed,” she said of the 47-year-old congressman. She called the reform plan “gobbledygook,” and had told the congressman she can’t understand it. “And I have a degree!” she told him.

And Catherine MacLaughlin, 63, said she has been a yellow-dog Democrat all her life but that she’s going to start voting Republican because she doesn’t like the health care proposal. MacLaughlin, a lawyer, said she has breast cancer and wondered whether under the plan, her treatment would be rationed because of her age.

But Joyce Hoover, 82, said she supports health reform and is irritated with what she sees as negativity from Republicans.

McCaul, she said, says Republicans have a plan. “But I haven’t heard it,” she said. “I thought he was like a parrot, mouthing what Republicans have been saying.”

But she agreed with her Republican fellow residents one thing: The clarity of the legislation.

“I don’t understand the plan,” Hoover said.