On August 18th, Jim Towey — director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from 2002 to May 2006 — wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he criticized the Department of Veterans Affairs for distributing an end-of-life counseling booklet that “presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political ‘push poll.’”

Towey argued that the Bush administration abandoned the 52-page work book, “Your Life, Your Choices,” because it reflected a bias towards ‘ending your life’, but Obama reinstated the publication. On Sunday, Towey appeared on FOX News Sunday to press his case:

The message they want to communicate, I think, is if you have a stroke, or if you have a coma situation that somehow your life has lost a little value and it may not be worth living anymore….the VA has been using this, a new directive just came out in July, urging providers to refer patients to it.

Watch it:

The book’s message, as its title suggests, is open to interpretation and Towey — who has a competing end-of-of life booklet — is certainly entitled to disagree with the publication’s particular approach to end-of-of life counseling. In fact, the VA is currently reviewing the publication. But in making his case, Towey and by extension Chris Wallace, fudged the facts. As Jed Lewison points out at Daily Kos, “despite Fox’s claim that the guide encourages assisted suicide and euthanasia, it is solely focused on helping veterans determine what type of care they wish to receive if they should ever become incapable of making their wishes known. The guidebook specifically makes clear that it has nothing to do with assisted suicide, which is illegal.”

The Bush administration referenced the book on the VA website from February 2001 through December 2008. In July 2009 the Obama administration made “a minor update to a small portion of the Bush directive and had nothing to do with the guidebook.” Thus, “there’s no truth to Fox’s claim that Pres. Obama gave new life to a guidebook killed off by Bush,” Lewison concludes.

Towey spread his myth (or personal pet peeve) by wrapping the story in an already-established (false) narrative — “when the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?,” he asked — and by Sunday he was explaining himself to an all-to-eager Chris Wallace. It’s a familiar template. Betsy McCaughey, Sally Pipes, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Rick Scott, and now Jim Towey have all mastered the art of perverting a single kernel of truth into a sensational story about an administration’s lust for euthanasia. While the administration is unable to rally around a single health care bill — since no one bill exists — opponents can freely cherry pick provisions and place the entire pro-reform movement on the defensive.

Perhaps inspired by Rep. Michelle Bachmann’s misinformed claims that the public option is unconstitutional, an op-ed in Saturday’s Washington Post makes the false claim that another key health reform provision is unconstitutional:

The Constitution assigns only limited, enumerated powers to Congress and none, including the power to regulate interstate commerce or to impose taxes, would support a federal mandate requiring anyone who is otherwise without health insurance to buy it. [...]

Significantly, in two key cases, United States v. Lopez (1995) and United States v. Morrison (2000), the Supreme Court specifically rejected the proposition that the commerce clause allowed Congress to regulate noneconomic activities merely because, through a chain of causal effects, they might have an economic impact. These decisions reflect judicial recognition that the commerce clause is not infinitely elastic and that, by enumerating its powers, the framers denied Congress the type of general police power that is freely exercised by the states.

For starters, the Post showed exceptionally poor judgment by choosing to publish the authors of this op-ed, right-wing attorneys David Rivkin and Lee Casey. The same duo labeled Amnesty International “un-American” after it criticized widespread human rights abuses at Guantanamo Bay, and they recently claimed that Bush-era DOJ memos authorizing the use of torture “prove we didn’t torture.”  Rivkin once claimed that President Bush had unilateral authority to use weapons of mass destruction on Russia. 

Saturday’s op-ed, however, is weak even even by Rivkin and Casey’s low standards.

In essence, the duo argue that Congress does not have the power to enact an individual mandate because such a mandate is “noneconomic” in nature.  Yet while they are correct that the Supreme Court has held Congress’ power to be more limited when it regulates outside of the economic sphere, their claim that insurance regulation is not “economic” is frankly absurd.

The provision Rivkin and Casey take aim at would require most uninsured Americans to buy a product — health insurance coverage — which pools thousands of people’s premiums together and pays those people’s medical costs as they become ill.  As Rivkin and Casey admit, the individual mandate would lower premiums nationwide by requiring more healthy individuals to buy into the system; while reducing the risk of catestrophic financial loss should a person who was previously uninsured experience catestrophic illness.  It is difficult to imagine a law which has a more obvious economic impact than a requirement that all Americans be insured.

Neither the Lopez nor the Morrison case, which Rivkin and Casey point to in their op-ed, support their claim that insurance reform is not economic in nature.  Lopez struck down a federal ban on guns in school zones; Morrison struck down a law providing federal remedies to the victims of violence against women.  Thus,  both cases involved activity that is far less economic in nature than the purchase of health insurance.  Neither carrying a gun nor committing an act of violence involve a sale, a market, or an exchange of something of value.  No employer hires workers simply to carry a gun into a schoolhouse; and there is little marketplace for cowardly acts of violence.

Simply put, Rivkin and Casey’s attack on health care reform has no basis in reality–and no grounding in the Constitution.  Even right-wing legal academics have dismissed it as entirely without merit.  Hopefully, next time these discredited attorneys submit a piece to the Washington Post, its editors will have the good sense to point them to a more appropriate publication.

This morning’s op-ed in the Washington Post suggests that the Republican party has abandoned any intention of negotiating a health care reform bill in good faith. The GOP chairman, as it turns out, has outsourced the party’s health care thinking to professional provocateur Betsy McCaughey and Republicans are now arguing that “that government shouldn’t get between seniors and their Medicare:”

But he and congressional Democrats are planning to raid, not aid, Medicare by cutting $500 billion from the program to fund his health-care experiment….. Second, we need to prohibit government from getting between seniors and their doctors. The government-run health-care experiment that Obama and the Democrats propose will give seniors less power to control their own medical decisions and create government boards that would decide what treatments would or would not be funded… Simply put, we believe that health-care reform must be centered on patients, not government.

The anti-government rhetoric is a throwback to the fear mongering of the 1960s, when party icons Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater warned that the Medicare program would lead to socialism and undermine the doctor patient relationship. Despite Medicare’s success and the unrealized fears of its detractors, the party is doubling down on its critique, seemingly condemning both the government-run Medicare program and the new public option. Or is it defending it? Along with the op-ed — Protecting Seniors — the Republican party has also released The Seniors’ Health Care Bill of Rights to “protect Medicare” and “ensure seniors can keep their current coverage” while prohibiting “doctors from getting in between seniors and their doctors.”

Does the party support the government-run program or is it against government-sponsored care? Steele is on a tight rope. He wants to “prohibit government from getting between seniors and doctors” — i.e. limit the government’s role in the Medicare program — but “protect [government sponsored] Medicare” — including the $500 billion in waste that’s already in the system.

Steele characterizes the proposed cuts as a “raid” on the system, but they’re really designed to eliminate inefficiencies, reduce insurance company subsidies, unnecessary hospital readmissions, and lower payments that encourage overtreatment. None of the $500 billion is coming out of benefits. In fact, some of the cuts have been endorsed by the health industry, and supported by Republicans. All of the latest Republican health care plans call for eliminating Medicare “waste, fraud and abuse”, for instance, and a good number of Republicans voted for Medicare payment cuts as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. In other words, they supported decreasing Medicare spending by 12.7% in 1997, but they’re now opposing cutting some 10% out of the program over 10 years.

To be clear, there is a difference between cutting around the edges of the Medicare system and cutting into the system. And, despite Steel’s commitment to “protect Medicare,” Republicans have proposed numerous schemes to slash benefits or privatize the program. Most notably, in 1995, under the leadership of then House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), Republicans proposed cutting 14% from projected Medicare spending over seven years and forcing millions of elderly recipients into managed health care programs or HMOs. The cuts were to ensure that Medicare is “going to wither on the vine,” Gingrich explained. Similarly, during the 2008 Presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) proposed cutting $1.3 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid.

The party that opposed the creation of Medicare (and has worked to undermine it) is now disingenuously coming to its rescue by opposing the kinds of changes that would help sustain the program over the long term. It’s recycling the inflammatory charges of Betsy McCaughey and Sally Pipes — Steele writes that government will “ration health care based on age” and dictate “the terms of end-of-life care” — and then feigning surprise at the Democrats’ inability to pass a so-called “bipartisan health care bill.”

Despite the GOP’s political posturing, however, Democratic health care reform still attracts popular support. “More than three out of every four Americans feel it is important to have a “choice” between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage,” and the majority support the other tenets of Obama’s reforms. As Tom Daschle has pointed out, “the degree to which Republicans make themselves less and less relevant is the degree to which a public option is more and more likely, because we are negotiating with the Democrats rather than the Republicans who oppose it. So I would say that a reconciliation vehicle would probably have a pure public option just because most likely it will only involve Democrats deciding what that reconciliation package will be.”