Bob Dole: GOP should support healthcare reform

Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole has come out in favor of Health Care Reform and believes Republicans in Congress need to be open to compromise.

The Republican Senator, and former Presidential hopeful from Kansas told reporters Thursday that he believes much of the Republican push back on healthcare reform has more to do with partisanship than actual angst over the merits of the reform. "Sometimes people fight you just to fight you," he told the Kansas City Star. They don't want Reagan to get it, they don't want Obama to get it, so we've got to kill it...Health care is one of those things. Now we've got to do something." Dole's comments are the latest in what is becoming a growing list of major GOP figures, all from outside Washington, who have also urged the party to approach the issue of healthcare in a more collaborative matter. That list includes California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger; former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson; as well as another former Senate Majority leader, Bill Frist. So far the pleas by Republicans outside the beltway seem to have fallen on deaf ears, as current Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell released a statement to the Huffington Post saying, "There are no GOP Senators calling for a government plan, or for other proposals such as cutting a half-trillion dollars from Medicare, raising premiums or increasing taxes on working families, that Democrat leaders are calling for."