Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) called on the super committee to lower the deficit by repealing the Affordable Care Act during a floor speech yesterday, arguing that it could “find the bulk of the $1.5 trillion in budget savings required under the recent deal to raise the federal debt ceiling by cutting back the programs created under last year’s healthcare law”:

“The Select Committee is getting to work, and I encourage both parties, all 12 members, to put the Affordable Care Act on the table, alongside other entitlements in need of reform,” he said on the House floor.

Burgess said other existing programs are on the table in the supercommittee, “so why shouldn’t new entitlements created by the Affordable Care Act be as well?” Burgess cast his proposal as an easy way to cut the deficit, since many of the programs under the law have not yet been implemented. “The Select Committee is getting to work, and I encourage both parties, all 12 members, to put the Affordable Care Act on the table, alongside other entitlements in need of reform,” he said on the House floor.

Burgess said other existing programs are on the table in the super committee, “so why shouldn’t new entitlements created by the Affordable Care Act be as well?” Burgess cast his proposal as an easy way to cut the deficit, since many of the programs under the law have not yet been implemented.

Burgess is certainly no fan of reform, but peeling back a measure that will lower the deficit over 10 years and slow the rate of growth in health care spending is particularly short sighted. If he wants to reduce how much the government spends on health services, then he should be offering a strong public option, a federal exchange, speeding up the delivery reforms, and a host of other cost containment initiatives that would actually save some money. Delaying coverage expansion isn’t fixing anything. It’s only kicking the health can down the road.

“Since Massachusetts enacted the Health Care Reform Plan in early 2006, total health care employment per capita in the state has grown more rapidly than that in the rest of the country,” new research in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes. “From January 2001 to December 2005, employment per capita grew by just over 8% in both Massachusetts and rest of the country. Subsequently, health care employment grew faster in Massachusetts, increasing by 9.5% from December 2005 through September 2010, while the rate of growth in the rest of the country was 5.5%”:

The data suggests that the Affordable Care Act may similarly accelerate the trend “toward health care’s being the dominant employment sector in the economy,” even if the law’s cost containment provisions produce a slower growth rate. The health care sector is already bucking the national trend, as the industry added 29,700 positions in August.

Last month, a popular reform to grant the California Insurance Commission the power to review and regulate proposed insurance rate hikes died a quick death in the state Senate. Although the bill, Assemblyman Mike Feuer’s (D) AB 52, passed the Assembly and the Senate Health Committee, the legislation was pulled after intense pressure from lobbyists. The California health insurance companies, as well as other health care industries, made AB 52 a top priority for defeat.

As ThinkProgress has reported, health insurance companies have concealed their lobbying efforts by funding many of the so-called “pro-business” trade groups in California, which have in turn lobbied or released letters opposed to AB 52. But a closer look at the health insurance lobby’s disclosure reports paints an even broader picture of their influence:

– State Sen. Ed Hernandez (D), the chair of the health committee, voted for AB 52 but told the press he could not support the bill in its current form. Hernandez’s income is boosted by about $69,000 a year in payments from Kaiser Health Plans, the state’s largest insurer (and one of AB 52′s most prominent opponents) in rent at an office building owned by Hernandez. The unusual arrangement might present a serious conflict of interest, but Hernandez’s spokesman told ThinkProgress that the rent payments began shortly before Hernandez entered the legislature, and that Kaiser maintains a community outreach center in the senator’s building.

– UnitedHealth Corporation, a large for-profit insurer with a presence in the Golden State, retained five different lobbying firms this sessions: Capitol Advocacy LLC; Carter, Wetch & Associates; Fernandez Government Solutions LLC; Thomas Advancy; and Terry M. McGann Inc. From January through May, the firm spent $221,481 on lobbying just in California.

– Kaiser Health Plans, the biggest spender of all the major health insurers in California, retained the lobbying firm Carpenter Hawkins Sievers LLC during the fight against AB 52. Last year, during the attempt by oil companies like Koch and Valero to repeal California’s clean energy laws, ThinkProgress profiled Carpenter Hawkins Sievers. Notably, principles at the firm worked for over a decade for the tobacco lobby to kill laws aimed at curtailing indoor smoking, smoking in public areas, and tobacco marketing towards children. Although Kaiser has touted itself as a company that encourages well-being, it is ironic that the insurer would hire slash and burn tobacco lobbyists.

A review of disclosure reports shows Kaiser Health Plans ($4,955,503), Anthem Blue Cross ($2,522,334), UnitedHealth ($1,021,376), HealthNet ($941,489), and Blue Shield of California ($724,412) as the insurers that have spent the most on lobbying since 2009 in Sacramento. The millions dropped on lobbying, like the tens of millions insurers have allocated for lobbying in DC and state capitals across the country, are premium dollars that could have been spent on actual health care.

PolitiFact gives Mitt Romney its “Pants on Fire” certification for his new argument contrasting Massachusetts’ 2006 health care law with the Affordable Care Act. During a presidential forum on Monday — and then again during yesterday’s GOP debate in California — Romney claimed that while he signed a law dealing with just 8 percent of the uninsured population, President Obama “dealt with 100 percent of American people. He said I’m going to change health care for all of you.”

If Romney believes that his law only impacted the state’s uninsured — 8.9 percent in 2006 — then, given the structural similarities of RomneyCare and ObamaCare, he should be comparing Massachusetts’ uninsured population to the national rate of 17 percent — not 100 all percent. But even that is not entirely correct. Both reform laws go beyond just offering coverage — they set minimum standards and benefits for all new policies and ask more of businesses. The Affordable Care Act does even more by implementing a series of payment rand delivery system changes that will hopefully lower the rate of growth in health care spending and encourage doctors and hospitals to prescribe less unnecessary tests and procedures.

But in this new line of attack Romney is pretending that he only enacted the mandate when in reality both his law and Obama’s are a significant downpayment towards improving the health care system — and that’s a good thing.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) blamed the federal government for his state’s high uninsurance rate during last night’s presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan library, arguing that the Department of Health and Human Services has refused to grant Medicaid flexibility to the state:

HARRIS: Governor, quick follow-up. Why are so many people in Texas uninsured?

PERRY: Well, bottom line is that we would not have that many people uninsured in the state of Texas if you didn’t have the federal government. We’ve had requests in for years at the Health and Human Services agencies to have that type of flexibility where we could have menus, where we could have co-pays, and the federal government refuses to give us that flexibility.

We know for a fact that, given that freedom, the states can do a better job of delivering health care. And you’ll see substantially more people not just in Texas, but all across the country have access to better health care.

Watch it:

As much as Perry would like to shift the blame for his state’s high uninsurance rate — in fact, the number of uninsured has increased by approximately 2 million during his 11-year tenure — 26 percent of Texans don’t have access to health care coverage for four simple reasons: 1) many Texas jobs are low wage and don’t offer insurance, 2) Texas has some of the most restrictive Medicaid eligibility rules in the country, 3) insurance rates are largely unregulated (and are higher than the national average) and 4) the state has a large immigrant population that often can’t enroll because of legal concerns or other impediments. Perry himself hasn’t focused on the health care access problem during his governorship, despite advocating for significant reductions in the Medicaid program — including an 8 percent cut in reimbursement rates to hospitals in the latest state budget.

His requests for Medicaid “flexibility” from the federal government are unremarkable. As the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff points out, aside from a failed 2008 waiver request to “limit the number of beneficiaries and create a new, very sparse benefits plan” — which was too restrictive even for the Bush administration — Perry doesn’t have much to show for his 11 years in office. Perry has failed to implement the policies he has espoused on the national stage (like “state innovation” in health care) and his health care record suggests that outside of some general conservative notions of limiting the reach of the Medicaid program to the very poor and reforming medical liability, he hasn’t emphasized health policy or even bothered to experiment with conservative solutions to expanding coverage and lowering costs. All that as his state is suffering from some of the highest uninsurance rates in the nation. Now what does that tell you about his priorities?