In case you had any doubt that North Carolina will play a key role in the fate of national health care reform, a “crucible for the debate” as the N&O called it this weekend, President Obama’s scheduled appearance at Broughton High School in Raleigh this week ought to convince you.

Still more evidence comes from the breathless hyperbole  about health care lately from North Carolina politicians and absurd claims of the think tanks and advocacy groups on the right.

Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory has emerged as a leading spokesperson for the anti-reform Right in the state.  Either there isn’t enough to do running North Carolina’s largest city or McCrory is still campaigning for governor or considering a bid for Congress.  Wonder how the folks in Charlotte are taking it?

The mayor-turned- anti-health-care-reform crusader was the featured speaker recently at a rally against President Obama’s health care plan held by the group Americans for Prosperity, these days more accurately called “Americans for Prosperity of Insurance Companies and the Pharmaceutical Industry.”

The most-often quoted soundbite from McCrory’s remarks was his question “Have you ever gone to a DMV office lately,” the newest twist on misleading people into thinking that the proposed public health care option means a government takeover of health care.

Putting aside that most people with Medicare, a government health care program, are happy with it, wonder how McCrory would compare the DMV with a private insurance company whose objective is to make a profit. It is in the company’s best interest to deny care to people with a chronic illness or other pre-existing condition

You may have to wait a while at DMV, but you will get your driver license eventually, even if you have had a speeding ticket or two. 

McCrory’s too clever rhetoric was topped by Dallas Woodhouse, the head of the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity, who proclaimed that “politicians want to control who lives and dies.”   Woodhouse moved the debate from misleading to offensive, questioning not only the reform proposal, but the motivation of the people behind it.

Having a public option for people to choose instead of a private plan doesn’t mean politicians will be in charge of anything if the reform proposal passes Congress.  Woodhouse apparently would rather have an insurance company whose first allegiance is to profit and shareholders making decisions about what drug or procedure to cover.

But McCory’s rhetoric and Woodhouse’s fear mongering are what the opponents of meaningful health care reform have been reduced to and not just in North Carolina. In Washington it’s worse, where the goals of many anti-reformers are not just to oppose Obama’s plan, but to do nothing.

GOP Senator James Inofe said recently that it will be a huge victory if his party can block health care reform, while Senator Jim DeMint said if Republicans could defeat reform, it would be Obama’s Waterloo. The latest edition of the New Yorker quotes conservative pundit William Kristol telling Republicans that their strategy in opposition to heath care reform should be to “go for the kill.”

Not much in there about what to do about the 46 million Americans who have no health insurance, 1.5 million of them in North Carolina. The point is politics now and there don’t appear to be any limits to the lengths the anti-reform advocates will go in Raleigh or Washington.

Too many people don’t have health insurance and too many people with insurance still can’t afford their medical bills. People are suffering because our system is broken.

Obama and Congressional leaders have proposals to fix it. This week try to ignore the hyperbolic rhetoric and listen to the president that the majority of North Carolina voters sent to the White House to address the nation’s problems.

People voted for change after all, not Waterloo or going for the kill or to keep a health care system that doesn’t work.