The protests against President Barack Obama's plan to reform healthcare in the United States have turned vicious. One of the many accusations levelled at the president is that he plans to create committees to determine whether the elderly should be allowed to live or die. On Tuesday evening, Barack Obama held a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in an attempt to rescue his beleaguered healthcare plans.

(Edited version of an article by Reinout van Wagtendonk)

It appears that opponents of health care reform will stop at nothing as they attempt to derail the plans. Demonstrators have been seen carrying posters of Barack Obama with a Hitler moustache and Rush Limbaugh, the most popular right-wing radio talk-show host in the US, compared the Obama administration's healthcare logo to a Nazi swastika.

Mr Limbaugh is the darling of right-wing conservative America, and millions of people listen every day as he rails against the (alleged) left-wing conspiracy that is attempting to force socialised medicine on an unsuspecting public. The White House plan to provide medical care for the nearly 50 million people who have no medical insurance has been compared to Nazi euthanasia policies and Stalin's brutal extermination policies.

Every corner
Congress is on summer recess but Democrats are still hard at work. President Obama, alarmed at the rising tide of anger and abuse generated by his healthcare reform plans, not to mention the huge misinformation campaign launched by opponents, has dispatched senators and representatives to every corner of the nation to hold town meetings to explain to ordinary people why the healthcare system needs reforming. When compared with medical care in other Western countries, the US system is extremely expensive, inefficient and only available to the few. Despite that, many Democrats have had a rough time over the last month as they attempted to explain the reforms.

At a town meeting chaired by Democratic Senator Arlen Specter in his home state of Pennsylvania, one man yelled, "We're all tired of this, this is why everybody in this room is so ticked off, I don't want this country turning into Russia, turning into a socialised country".

Another man screamed, "One day God is gonna stand before you and he's gonna judge you and all the rest of your damn cronies on the Hill and then you'll get your just desserts".

Orchestrated
The public outcry isn't universal and many Democrats say the sensationalist made-for-TV and YouTube protests are far from spontaneous. The Democrats have accused Rush Limbaugh and other Republican party propagandists, along with insurance companies, private hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry of orchestrating the demonstrations: "Now, desperate Republicans and a their well-funded allies are organising angry mobs...”

Former Republican presidential candidate Sarah Palin tossed oil onto the fire when she accused the president of planning to create a commission that will decide if old people should live or die and whether Down's syndrome babies should be allowed to be born. She wrote on her Facebook site that President Obama was seeking "to create a death panel comprised of government bureaucrats who are would decide, based on a subjective judgement of the level of productivity in society, whether they are worthy of health care".

The right-wing populist politician continued, "Such a system is downright evil".

Pull the plug on Grandma
"Wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that has actually been proposed," said Mr Obama in New Hampshire last night. He continued, "One of the rumours that we need to dispose of is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for 'death panels' that will, basically pull the plug on grandma because we've decided it's too expensive to let grandma live any longer. It's not true".

The president wasn't met by the same sort of violent, irrational opposition that fellow Democrats have faced as they try and convince people of the necessity of reforming health care and Mr Obama remains convinced that a majority of Americans will support the plan if he campaigns vigorously for the reforms.

The people at last night's meeting in Portsmouth applauded when Mr Obama said, "If we can set up a system that can give you some security, that is worth a lot. And this is the best chance we have ever had to do that. But we're all having to come together, we going to have to make it happen, I'm confident that we can do so, but I'm going to need your help New Hampshire...”

However, the longer this debate rages on, the more doubtful it becomes that Congress will pass the real reforms necessary in order to make health care affordable for everyone.

editing/translation (jc)