Overhauling the nation’s ailing health care system is too important to be trivialized by the sort of rhetoric we’ve been hearing lately.

“The country should be in the midst of a transformative national conversation,” Karen Ignagni, leader of America’s Health Insurance Plans trade group, said recently.

That’s not happening. Instead, we’ve seen a free-for-all of careless exaggeration, retooled social issues, partisan posturing and the revival of a time-worn “socialized medicine” shibboleth that didn’t work 50 years ago and is out of date today. Unfortunately, these tactics have been a staple of the health care debate for two decades.

In 1963, there was Ronald Reagan’s ultimately unsuccessful argument that a government-operated medical program for older people was the first step to socialized medicine and eventually to a socialistic state. His grim forecast: “You and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”

When the Clinton administration proposed a national health plan in 1993, conservative constitutional historian Betsy McCaughey produced an analysis of the plan that animated much of the debate that eventually sunk the bill. The 1,342 pages of the bill, she warned, were packed with mandates and exclusions that rationed care, targeted older people and restricted the choice of medical care.

This year, she again has read the bills produced by four House and Senate committees—1,000-plus pages each. Once again, she’s warning that they are packed with mandates and exclusions that ration care, target seniors and restrict choice.

McCaughey has been joined by familiar figures from culture wars past. The Family Research Council, for example, launched an ad campaign featuring an older man: “They won’t pay for my surgery, but we’re forced to pay for abortions,” he says. Then a voice asks: “Will this be our future? Our greatest generation denied care. Our future generation denied life.” In fact, none of the measures passed by congressional committees covers abortion.

What’s missing is what’s new. President Obama and congressional advocates have been slow to highlight their innovations, namely features that are distinctly American, where employer-provided care is the essential building block. Nor have they emphasized essential consumer protections: People can get insurance coverage even if they have preexisting health conditions; coverage will improve for individuals and small-business workers; and the Medicare Part D “doughnut hole” becomes smaller. Most important, they all but ignored a major public concern—cutting health care costs.

Lawmakers should worry less about delay and concentrate on getting the details right. In the meantime, take a deep breath, folks. Give this terribly important issue the thoughtful and serious attention it deserves.

Jim Toedtman is editor and vice president of AARP Bulletin