Perry takes on Romney's Massachusetts health reforms

GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry criticized the Massachusetts health overhaul that became law while fellow candidate Mitt Romney was governor. Meanwhile, news outlets are fact-checking statements about related reform initiatives -; such as Texas' tort reform law, and members of Congress appear to be taking a less-is-more approach to August town hall meetings.

The Boston Globe: Perry's Critique Of Romney Health Law Has Practical Focus
Governor Rick Perry of Texas tepidly criticized Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health care plan yesterday, but the two GOP rivals remain in general agreement over the Bay State's right to develop its signature health care law. "Massachusetts is free to experiment with state-run health care," Perry wrote last year in his book "Fed Up."' "If federalism is respected, the people of Massachusetts are free to try it while the rest of the nation sits back and watches to see if they have any success, and whether any success they do have is worth the price of liberty to get it."' The argument largely mirrors the one Romney laid out in a high-profile speech three months ago in Michigan, and it differs from those of others in the field -; including Representative Michele Bachmann -; who question the constitutionality of the individual mandate at the heart of Romney's Massachusetts plan (Viser, 8/26).

The Hill: Perry: Romney Realizing Massachusetts Health Care Law Is 'Huge Problem For Him'
The Massachusetts health care law passed by Mitt Romney (R) as governor is a "huge problem," Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said Thursday of his top competitor for the GOP presidential nomination. Perry assailed the state health care law for its similarities to President Obama's nationwide health care reform law, which the Texan called a "total debacle" (O'Brien, 8/25).

CBS News: Perry Challenges Romney's Health Care Plan In Massachusetts
Republican presidential contender Rick Perry is the latest candidate in the GOP field to take Mitt Romney to task for his record on health care. Perry, speaking on Laura Ingraham's conservative talk radio show on Thursday, lambasted the former Massachusetts governor for passing a universal health care law in the state that many have likened to the plan President Obama pushed through Congress last year -; including the president himself. Perry told Ingraham the law was a "total debacle" and would be a "huge problem" for Romney (Madison, 8/25).

The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire: Perry Takes A Swat At Romney's Health Care Law
It wasn't quite "Obamneycare," but Texas Gov. Rick Perry chided former Mitt Romney for the health care overhaul he signed as Massachusetts governor. "I think Mitt is finally recognizing that the Massachusetts health care plan that he passed is a huge problem for him, and yeah it was not almost perfect," Mr. Perry said Thursday on the Laura Ingraham Show, a conservative national radio program (Yadron, 8/25).

Kaiser Health News: GOP Presidential Hopefuls: Where They Stand On Health Care
Kaiser Health News' interactive chart shows where five of the candidates – Bachmann, Huntsman, Paul, Perry and Romney – currently stand on major health care issues (8/25).

PolitiFact/St. Petersburg Times: Rick Perry Says Texas Added 21,000 Doctors Because Of Tort Reform
There is no question that tort reform drove down medical malpractice insurance premiums and reduced the number of malpractice suits. And there is no question that most health care providers like the change ... Texas has only about 13,000 more doctors in the state and the historic trends suggest that population growth was the driving factor. We rate his statement False (Greenberg, 8/25).

Meanwhile, in congressional political news -;

Los Angeles Times: Members Of Congress Avoid Town Hall Brawls This Recess
This summer, with approval ratings of Congress as low as 13 percent, they appear to have learned their lesson. Washington lawmakers are using the political version of crowd control, shying away from wide-open forums and choosing alternative appearances to avoid the attacks that dominated the 2009 health care town halls or this year's outbursts over Republican proposals to restructure Medicare (Mascaro, 8/26).

PolitiFact/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Testing Kind's Claim On Medicare, Poverty Reduction
U.S. Rep. Ron Kind says that "thanks to Medicare," 75 percent fewer seniors are in poverty, and most have health coverage. … So, Kind is right on the 75 percent. But his statement is aimed at a larger point -; that the poverty reduction is due to Medicare. In the Great Depression, at least half of all seniors were living in poverty, but that started to fall after the 1935 act creating Social Security. Experts agree that much of the drop in more recent decades is due not to Medicare, but to improvements in Social Security benefits, especially in the 1970s (Umhoefer, 8/25).