G.O.P. Steps Up Attacks on Health Care Reform

WASHINGTON — With President Obama set to step up his focus on health care this week, the political battle over the plan working its way through Congress is entering a new register, and Republicans are pushing back in ever sharper language.

“Under the Obama plan, the vast majority of Americans will pay more to get less — it’s that simple,” Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said during a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington on Monday.

(There is, in fact, no “Obama plan” — the president has yet to endorse any of the approaches being worked on by congressional committees.)

Still, Mr. Steele said, Democratic proposals would leave Americans with “fewer options and less care and we still won’t cover all of the uninsured.”

His remarks came after a weekend when the nation’s governors, Republicans and Democrats alike, voiced serious concerns about the emerging health care plan, during a meeting in Biloxi, Miss. Governors of both parties said they feared that Washington was about to impose expensive new Medicaid obligations on the states without supplying money to pay for them.