Washington » Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said Sunday that Democrats are proposing health care legislation that is untenable for Republicans to support and warned it would be an abuse of power if congressional leaders use a rare parliamentary tactic to force through their reform plans.

"We need to work on it together," Hatch said of health care reform on NBC's Meet the Press. "But I have to tell you, they're insisting on these, I think, legislation-killing approaches that literally Republicans cannot go along with."

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the same show that Democrats are trying to seek a bipartisan bill, but if Republicans are unwilling to cooperate, Democrats may

employ a parliamentary tool that would only require a simple majority of votes.

"Yes, we are considering alternatives," Schumer said, noting that, "It's looking less and less likely that, certainly, Republican leadership in House and Senate will go for a bipartisan bill."

Hatch decried the notion of using "reconciliation," which requires only 51 Senate votes to pass legislation. Including two independents, Democrats hold 60 votes in the upper body.

"That would be an abuse of the process," Hatch said.

Hatch also raised an argument -- debunked as half-true by the nonpartisan PolitiFact -- that only 15 million Americans are without health care because they can't afford or can't get coverage.

He says

a total of 47 million people are without coverage -- about 15 percent of Americans -- but that most of those are either illegal immigrants, people who can afford coverage but don't sign up, and those who qualify for already-in-place government plans but haven't joined.

"We all know we need insurance reform, both Democrats and Republicans, but we're going to throw out a system that works for 85 percent of 300 million people to [cover] 15 million people that we could take care of with subsidies and approaches that would be simple," Hatch said.

PolitiFact said in a posting this week that while Hatch's numbers are "in the ballpark," they come from a "hodgepodge" of different sources and years, and they don't take into account people who might be double or triple-counted.

Hatch continued to rip Democrats for pushing reform as a way to jettison America's private health care system for a government-run program like Canada, Germany, the U.K. or France.

"Choose any one of those over ours, and I'll tell ya, you don't know what you're doing," Hatch said. "As bad as ours is in some ways, and it does need reform, I've got to tell you, it's head and shoulders over any other plan, any other government [program] in the world."

Schumer, trying to beat back on myths about the Democratic proposals, said there is no requirement in the bills for people to join a public option plan.

"It is not a mandate, it is an option," Schumer said. "If you like your insurer, you keep it. If you don't like it, you have the option of a public insurer."

Noting that a public-option plan is still very much in consideration, Schumer also blasted critics who say a government-run plan would be unfair to private insurers.

"It's like a college system in New York state, in Utah: there are public colleges, private colleges," Schumer said. "You choose the one that's best for you and competition makes both of them better."

Both Hatch and Schumer are members of the Senate Finance Committee.

tburr@sltrib.com