ThinkProgress filed this report from a town hall in Carroll, Iowa.

Politifact’s 2009 “Lie of the Year” was that the landmark health care reform legislation contained a clause authorizing “death panels.” The smear, started by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), was propagated by other Republicans, including long-time Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who warned that the bill could “pull the plug on grandma.”

At a town hall in Carroll, Iowa, on Monday, Grassley repeated the falsehood that the health care reform law would lead to “rationing” and result in seniors not getting the care they need. One Iowa constituent, however, challenged Grassley’s characterization.

Sharon Gruber politely told the senator that what the law actually does is “move away from [paying for] procedures and going to [paying for] outcomes.” In a surprise twist, Grassley not only agreed with the woman’s assessment that the law simply shifts to a pay-for-outcome model, but the Iowa senator actually reversed course and agreed that “what you say is absolutely right and should be done,” less than two minutes after calling the provision “rationing.”

GRASSLEY: The reason why I think you have to worry about this panel rationing, or leading to rationing, is because presently, health care costs go up about two to three times the rate of inflation. Their goal is to not have health care costs after they kick in more than 1.5 percent the rate of inflation. So where’s that going to come from? That’s going to come from not reimbursing doctors, hospitals, etc. as much, and then that’s going to lead to people deciding, “if you’re over 80 years old, should you have a knee replaced?” Whereas nowadays there’s no question about it.

GRUBER: I think that what they’re trying to do is move away from the fact that doctors and hospitals are paid on the procedure that’s used. [...] We’ve gotta get the fraud out of the system because that’s where a lot of the costs go. And this is part of it. They’re looking to move away from procedures and going to outcomes, from what I understand.

GRASSLEY: And that’s a very good thing to do. But they’re still limited to the decisions they’re making to be within 1.5 percent over inflation. But what you say is absolutely right and should be done. Not everything in the president’s health care reform bill is bad.

Though Grassley told Gruber that “[n]ot everything in the president’s health care reform bill is bad,” it’s important to remember that the Iowa senator joined every one of his Senate Republican colleagues in voting to repeal the entire bill in February, including the shift to a pay-for-outcome model, a ban on preexisting conditions, and increased funding for community health centers.

ThinkProgress spoke with Gruber after the event to get her reaction. She said she was “very disappointed” in Grassley for promoting the myth of rationing and death panels. Gruber noted that in the past he had “tended to be above [...] these talking points,” but that was no longer the case:

Last week Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) released harsh new anti-abortion regulations that could shut down the state’s exisiting abortion clinics. Now the Huffington Post is reporting there may have been a conflict of interest in McDonnell’s administration over the regulations. Matt Cobb, deputy secretary of health and human resources, helps lead the office that will interpret the regulations. He is also married to Victoria Cobb, a prominent anti-abortion lobbyist in the state who has spent years lobbying for clinic regulations like the ones just released:

Victoria Cobb, president of the right-wing Family Foundation of Virginia, has been lobbying state lawmakers for the past decade to pass legislation that would force the Department of Health to release abortion clinic regulations like those adopted by South Carolina in 1996 that reduced the number of clinics in the state from 14 to 3.

Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, told the Huffington Post that Matt Cobb sat in on meetings discussing the regulations with her and her colleagues:

“People who have been dealing with these issues find it odd that he’s in those meetings about the regulations,” Keene told HuffPost. “I find it really intriguing to think that the premiere anti-abortion advocate is basically married to the person who’s now in charge of implementing the clinic regulations, and he’s involved every step of the way.” [...]

A former top state health official, who spoke with HuffPost on the condition of anonymity, agreed, saying he would be “surprised if [Matt] Cobb was not reviewing” the regulations while they were being written. The official explained that the office of the Secretary of Health and Human Resources has some leeway in terms of how they can interpret what the legislation says.

Chris Freund, a spokesman for The Family Foundation, said the Cobbs’ marriage did not influence the regulations. Freund has also referred to the regulations as the “biggest pro-life victory in Virginia in a decade.” They are even more far-reaching than those passed recently in Kansas, and force abortion clinics to comply with overly-onerous construction requirements that were intended to “inform the construction of new hospitals — not doctors’ clinics that already exist.”

“That tells you right there that this is not about safety, it’s about politics,” said Jill Abbey, who oversees four clinics in Virginia, which she says would not be able to operate under the new regulations.

The regulations come after McDonnell signed SB 924 into law, which requires all clinics in Virginia performing first-trimester abortions to be regulated like hospitals. The Virginia Board of Health will vote on these proposed regulations on Sept. 15, and if approved, they will go into effect on Dec. 31.

Yesterday the Republican Governors Association (RGA) released a list of 31 proposals designed to bring down the cost of Medicaid, which is one of the costliest budget items for many states. Unsurprisingly, the plan would give governors much greater control over Medicaid programs and loosen federal restrictions.

The Wall Street Journal notes that the GOP governors also use the proposal to take aim at one of their favorite scapegoats — undocumented immigrants:

The RGA has floated most of the ideas before, but one jumped out as new. Solution No. 5 would “require the federal government to take full responsibility for the uncompensated care costs of treating illegal aliens.” Keep in mind that federal law already prohibits illegal immigrants from enrolling in Medicaid.

But RGA Policy Chairman and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said illegal immigrants sneak onto the program in his and other states and add to its tab.

“Let’s don’t kid ourselves,” Gov. Barbour told reporters during a briefing at RGA headquarters in Washington. “There are people who are getting on the system and violating the law.”

Undocumented immigrants can get emergency care through Medicaid, but they must pay for all non-emergency care and are not eligible for other Medicaid benefits.

Because illegally enrolled non-citizens make up such a small portion of people on Medicaid, the proposal is clearly more about ideology than cost-cutting. Barbour and Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources Bill Hazel both declined to say how much it actually costs their states when undocumented immigrants don’t pay their hospital bills, but “Democratic governors haven’t cited it as a significant cost.”

Studies have found that “because most illegal immigrants are relatively young and healthy, they generally don’t need as much health care treatment as U.S. citizens.” According to USA Today, they account for less than 2 percent of national medical spending.

Ironically, Republican efforts to block immigrants from enrolling in government insurance programs means that undocumented immigrants are much less likely to have health insurance than other families, which drives up health care costs when they inevitably show up in emergency rooms to get care. An effort to add legal immigrant children to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program was blocked in the Senate in 2007, and lawmakers added language to ensure that illegal immigrants were excluded.

Former Arkansas Gov. and Fox News host Mike Huckabee (R) will be the keynote speaker at an anti-abortion event in Jackson, Mississippi next week. Huckabee will help raise money for Personhood Mississippi, a radical group that is trying to amend the state constitution to give every fertilized eggs full rights:

The Personhood Mississippi group is kicking off its campaign Sept. 8 in support of the “personhood” initiative that is slated to appear on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The initiative seeks to define a “person” as a being at the point of fertilization, which would restrict abortion rights in Mississippi.

Tickets for the banquet, which will be held at First Baptist Church on North State Street, start at $50.

RH Reality Check points out that Huckabee was actively involved in the failed 2008 Colorado Personhood effort as well. Personhood USA hopes to get proposals on the ballot in nearly half the states by 2012.

As ThinkProgress has previously reported, Personhood USA and its affiliates are fringe anti-abortion groups that are determined to redefine life as beginning at the moment of fertilization, effectively outlawing contraceptives like birth control pills. The medical community has long been in agreement that fertilization does not mark the beginning of a pregnancy — fertilized eggs must first be implanted, and only about half of fertilized eggs actually result in a pregnancy.

Yet a growing number of lawmakers like Huckabee are supporting Personhood USA’s efforts to buck medical expertise and legally define life as the moment a sperm meets an egg. These laws would turn common forms of contraception into the legal equivalent of homicide and place millions of women in jeopardy.

Contraceptives like the pill and IUDs not only act to prevent fertilization, but, if fertilization does occur, may prevent that fertilized egg from implanting in a woman’s uterus. Personhood USA considers this tantamount to abortion, and wants to make it a punishable offense for women to control their own fertility. According to 2008 numbers, around 11 million American women use birth control pills and another 2 million use intrauterine devices (IUDs).

Because “personhood” legislation could make any effort to terminate a pregnancy a criminal act, it could also prevent doctors from saving the lives of women with ectopic pregnancies, which are never viable and need to be terminated as soon as possible.