Speaking on Fox News last night, right-wing Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) claimed that health care reform is unconstitutional:

It is not within our power as members of Congress, it’s not within the enumerated powers of the Constitution, for us to design and create a national takeover of health care. Nor is it within our ability to be able to delegate that responsibility to the executive.

Watch it:

Bachmann, however, is wrong about both the contents of the health care plan and the requirements of the Constitution. There is nothing in any of the health care bills under consideration which resembles a “national takeover of health care.” Conservatives like to use this language when referring to the public health option. Like other insurers, the public option would collect premiums from people who choose to buy into it, and then spend those premiums to insure these participants.

Had Bachmann bothered to read Article I of the Constitution before going on Fox, she would have learned that Congress has the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises” and to “provide for….the general welfare of the United States.” Rather than itemizing specific subject matters, such as health care, which Congress is allowed to spend money on, the framers chose instead to give Congress a broad mandate to spend money in ways that promote the “general welfare.”

It’s unclear what the basis is for Bachmann’s claim that the public option is an unconstitutional delegation of power to the Executive. There is a 74 year-old decision — decided by the same right-wing Supreme Court which believed most of the New Deal to be unconstitutional — which holds that Congress could not simply grant President Roosevelt nearly limitless authority to do whatever he wanted in order to prevent “unfair competition.” But no one has proposed giving President Obama similarly unchecked authority over health care. Rather, pages 116-128 of the House bill that Bachmann will vote on provide extremely detailed instructions explaining how the Executive Branch must manage a public health plan.

It’s important to note just how radical Bachmann’s theory of the Constitution is. If Congress does not have the power to create a modest public option which competes with private health plans in the marketplace, then it certainly does not have the authority to create Medicare. Similarly, Congress’ power to spend money to benefit the general welfare is the basis for Social Security, federal education funding, Medicaid, and veterans benefits such as the VA health system and the GI Bill. All of these programs would cease to exist in Michele Bachmann’s America.

Cross-posted on ThinkProgress.

Our guest blogger is Gov. Howard Dean, former chairman of the DNC and the author of Howard Dean’s Prescription For Real Health Care Reform.

In today’s Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein argues that Democrats should just give up on the public option. “Enough already with the public option!,” he writes. Steven thinks we should drop one of the most popular and effective aspects of health care reform simply because the fight is too politically difficult in Congress. I think such an approach would ruin health care reform and devastate the Democratic party.

Steven is confusing health insurance reform with health care reform. If we only get reform that requires insurance companies to provide coverage to everyone who applies, charge everyone the same premiums, and end their discriminatory practices, that would be great insurance reform, but it’s not, as Steven writes, health care reform.

Real health care reform that includes a new public health insurance option would give Americans a real choice and not reward for-profit health insurers with 47 milllion new customers. Real health care reform that includes a new public health insurance option would cut out the administrative waste of private insurers and begin changing the way health care is delivered. Real health care reform that includes a new public health insurance option could adopt the kind of payment reforms that would start to “hold down long-term growth in health spending” and encourage providers to deliver care more efficiently. We know that premiums in the public option would be about 10 percent lower and that a real robust plan that piggy backs off of Medicare’s infrastructure could save us somewhere between $75 billion and $150 billion over 10 years.

Just because the public health insurance option is “new,” moreover, does not mean it’s not worth fighting for. Steven points out that I did not propose a robust public option in 2004 election. The measure of good politics and policy is the ability to accept and identify new ideas. My 2004 plan may not have included a new stand-alone program, but it did allow Americans 55 to 65 to enroll in Medicare and everyone under 25 would have been eligible for Medicaid.

I believed that government could help expand coverage and control costs then and the overwhelming majority of Americans believe it today. If the August recess has taught us one thing, it’s that Republicans have ended all serious conversations about reform and will oppose reform whether it includes a public option or not. They want to make the choice for the American people instead of letting Americans have their own choice of coverage. And if Democrats follow their lead, they will have to face the voters’ choice come November.

Two of the three Republicans working to pass a bipartisan health care reform bill in the Senate Finance Committee aren’t interested in producing comprehensive legislation. While Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the committee’s ranking member, is crisscrossing Iowa grossly misrepresenting the intent of reform, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WI) has indicated that he disagrees with “the entire approach the Finance Committee is taking:”

Congress should approach health care reform in steps, instead of trying to put together a comprehensive package said U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.

Health care is so massive that reforms can’t be made with one major bill, which is what the Obama administration and congressional Democrats are pushing, Enzi told members of the Casper Rotary Club on Monday at the Parkway Plaza Hotel. [...]

“We do need to have health care reform,” Enzi said.

“We do need to get it right. We need take the time to do it. I think the only way it will happen is we need to break it down into smaller parts than we have now and put it through one at a time.”

It’s unclear if Enzi has previously supported incremental reform. In October 2008, Enzi wrote, “I have introduced a comprehensive plan, 10 Steps to Transform Health Care in America, to make sure that every American can have the health care coverage they need….We could enact any one of these steps today and produce real results tomorrow.” “Steps” suggests incrementalism, but comprehensive implies a certain level of immediacy. Earlier this month, Enzi argued against a Sept. 15 deadline for the bill by saying that he was “committed to getting health care reform right, not finishing a bill by some arbitrary date.” In fact, he even tired to win assurances from Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi, as well as the Administration “that the bipartisan agreements reached in the Finance Committee will survive in a final bill that goes to the President.”

Enzi’s ambiguity says as much about Enzi and the Republican party as it does about Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and the viability of the six-party talks. As ranking member of the Senate HELP Committee, Enzi sat through a 12 days of mark-up, offered a series of amendments to the Kennedy bill, and pretended to support reforming the health care system through a single piece of legislation. Likewise, Enzi must have known that Baucus’ ‘six party talks’ were intended to produce a very similar measure. If he didn’t support the goal of the talks, why did he join the effort? And more importantly, why did Baucus invite Enzi to the table? Negotiating a comprehensive health care reform bill with an incrementalist is like debating the merits of the fur trade with a PETA representative. You have to overcome a certain hurdle and accept certain premises before agreeing to talks.

Democrats are understandably frustrated at Baucus’ lack of progress and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has even suggested that if the committee fails to produce a bill by the September 15th deadline, Democrats should push the Kennedy bill through the Senate and add the financing parts in conference. Enzi’s admission that he does not support immediate reform further suggests that Baucus’ bipartisan measure won’t make very good health care policy.