US President Barack Obama has condemned the wild 'scare tactics' peddled by opponents of his healthcare reform plan.
Mr Obama threw himself into the fierce public debate over his plans to bring health coverage in reach of all US citizens in a campaign-style town hall meeting in New Hampshire meant to mobilise support for his plan.
With a series of events this week, the president is attempting to wrest back control of the acrimonious debate from Republicans who claim his programme is too expensive and represents a government seizure of the private health system.
The showdown over healthcare has much wider implications than just the medical treatment offered to Americans.
A legislative defeat would deal a devastating political blow to Mr Obama and likely severely curtail his political capital and chances of enacting the rest of his ambitious plan to force through sweeping change.
Foes of Mr Obama's reform drive accuse him of plotting a government takeover of the US private healthcare system, and lawmakers who back his plans have faced a furious backlash from conservatives in their own town hall meetings.
Critics also claim Mr Obama will raise taxes to pay for a plan they say would result in government dictating healthcare choices for Americans and lower the standard of coverage for those who do have insurance.
But Obama, hoping to offer healthcare to the 46m US citizens who currently have no insurance, attempted to cool the rhetoric heard on conservative talk radio and cable news channels.
'For all the scare tactics out there, what is truly scary - what is truly risky - is if we do nothing.'
Mr Obama also rejected the notion that his plan would frame a bureaucratic 'death panel' to make end-of-life choices, in an apparent reference to a Facebook post by former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
'The rumour that's been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for death panels that will basically pull the plug on Grandma because we've decided that it's too expensive to let her live anymore.
'Somehow, it has gotten spun into this idea of death panels, I am not in favour of that, I want to clear the air here.'
The president said that the confusion had arisen out of an initiative in the House of Representatives to allow elderly patients to be reimbursed from a federal health plan for consultations about hospice and end-of-life care.
