The newest member of Congress said health care reform was on its “last legs” before his election and is calling for Washington, D.C., to start from scratch on health reform, a stance echoed by one of the highest-ranking Republicans.

Scott Brown

Sen.-elect Scott Brown (R-Mass.) told ABC’s “This Week” that he thinks the entire health care reform plan being debated in Congress should be scrapped and the process should start anew.

Brown told Barbara Walters that health care reform was “on its last legs before I even got elected” Jan. 19 as “Democrats were upset at the backroom deals,” referring to a Medicaid exemption for Nebraska to secure the vote of its Democratic senator, Ben Nelson, for the party to reach 60 votes and pass its reform bill.

Brown added that what he is hearing is that the desire now regarding reform is “to go back to the drawing board and do it in a transparent, bipartisan manner.”

“I have to see what’s being proposed,” he said. “A lot of states want that flexibility. They do not want the federal government always being in their business saying you have to do it this way, this way, and this way. But other states may not have that ability. They may want more government involvement.”

Brown added that he supports health insurance for all, a system in place in Massachusetts through its Health Connector, that he said he feels is working well.

“In Massachusetts, the free market, the free enterprise has taken control, and they’re offering a wide range of plans,” Brown told Walters. “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.”

‘Big government takeover’ still being pushed

Brown is not the only one advocating throwing out the current House and Senate bills and starting all over again.

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said health care reform is not dead, but accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) of “continuing to scheme and plot, trying to find some way to get their big government takeover of health care enacted.”

While “they’re having problems” doing so, Boehner added, “Republicans are going to continue to be vigilant in exposing this.

“They’re still trying to find a way, even after Massachusetts, the election there, they’re still trying to find a way to shove this down the throats of the American people,” he said.” And the American people are saying, ‘No, stop!’ And what we need to do is scrap the big government takeover bill and let’s start over.  Let’s start over on commonsense steps that we can do–we can take to make our system work better.”

Meanwhile, White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod, appearing on the same program, said despite such calls from Republicans, health reform should not have to wait to become a reality.

“The American people aren’t saying let’s walk away from health insurance reform.  They’ve seen their premiums double in the last 10 years,” he said. “They want us to act.  They’d like us to work together to do it. And in fact, we’ve incorporated a number of the main Republican ideas into our proposal.”

Axelrod added, “The president is determined that we deal with the problems in front of us, and health care is one of those problems.”