Kansas City, Mo. ? Former presidential candidate and Kansas Sen. Bob Dole said Wednesday that a top GOP congressional leader asked him not to publicly support health care reform, but the Republican did so anyway.

Dole, speaking at a health care reform summit in Kansas City, called it “one of the most important measures members of Congress will vote on in their lifetimes,” the Kansas City Star reported. Dole said he expected something to pass this year or in early 2010.

But he reiterated his opposition to President Barack Obama’s push for a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. Dole said the so-called “public option” would drive private companies out of business.

He told reporters after his speech that he had been hearing from some “high-ranking Republicans” that he and his former Senate colleagues shouldn’t take a stand. Dole said one was a “very prominent Republican, who happens to be the Republican leader of the Senate,” an unsubtle reference to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

McConnell spokesman Don Stewart dismissed the claims.

Later, Dole released a statement with former Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, acknowledging that the various reform bills in Congress are flawed but “provide some basis on which Congress can move forward.”

“The American people have waited decades and if this moment passes us by, it may be decades more before there is another opportunity,” the statement said.