Then later (on her show last week)Barbara Walters asked Senator Scott Brown, “Why isn't what's good for Massachusetts good for the whole country?” Brown responded, “In Massachusetts, the free market, the free enterprise has taken control, and they're offering a wide range of plans. I've never ever said that people should not get health insurance. It's just a question of if we're going to take a one-size-fits-all government plan or we're going to do something where the individual states can tailor their plans as we've done.”
When Walters asked him, “Do you think the whole plan should be scrapped?” Brown said, “Yes.”
“The whole plan?" Walters pushed him on it.
“Yes,” Brown said again.
In the Roundtable discussion afterwards liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman expressed incredulity at Brown’s statement, claiming that the Massachusetts health care bill, which as you may recall, was pushed through by Republican Governor Mitt Romney with Brown voting for it in the Massachusetts senate, is nearly identical to the Senate bill.
Was Krugman right? PolitiFact says he was, that the differences in the bills are few and in the small print. Here's what they had to say:
PolitiFact | Krugman calls Senate health care bill similar to law in Massachusetts
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So Brown is off to a bit of a rough start in his relationship to the facts, not an entirely unknown flaw in a politician. But he's in the big leagues now, so he better do his homework before he talks on national network TV, or else Tina Fey might be impersonating him on Saturday Night Live sometime soon. People loved his populist truck driving image on the campaign trail, and his fiery rhetoric about the rascals in Washington. But now he’s in Washington, and people do actually pay attention to what you say there.
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