Less than two weeks after Mississippi voters overwhelmingly defeated a measure that would give two-celled zygotes the full rights of American citizens, Virginia Republicans are reviving the fight for “personhood” legislation in their state:

Del. Bob Marshall (R-Prince William), one of the most outspoken legislators on abortion issues, filed a so-called personhood bill for the upcoming legislative session, which will begin in January.

The bill provides that “unborn children at every stage of development enjoy all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of the commonwealth, subject only to the laws and constitutions of Virginia and the United States, precedents of the United States Supreme Court, and provisions to the contrary in the statutes of the commonwealth.” [...]

Many Virginia Republicans have said they are eager to revive socially conservative legislation that stalled or died in a Democratic-controlled Senate, now that both chambers are controlled by the GOP.

Despite the nation’s continuing unemployment crisis, Virginia Republicans are determined to use their new power to launch an all-out assault on women’s reproductive freedom. Like other personhood amendments, Marshall’s bill would effectively criminalize birth control and in vitro fertilization, in addition to abortion in all cases. Despite the defeat in Mississippi anti-abortion forces are pushing ahead with personhood initiatives in states including Oregon, Colorado, Montana, and Georgia.

Proponents say they will add greater specificity to their amendments “so it’s clearly understood by doctors and those women using contraceptives and fertility treatment,” although the text of the Virginia measure does not make any such destinations.

In 1993, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed the concept of a national individual mandate, saying on Meet the Press, “I am for people, individuals — exactly like automobile insurance — individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance.” He reiterated the principle in 2007 — writing in a Des Moines Register op-ed, “Personal responsibility extends to the purchase of health insurance. Citizens should not be able to cheat their neighbors by not buying insurance” — and again in 2008: “Finally, we should insist that everyone above a certain level buy coverage (or, if they are opposed to insurance, post a bond).” His for-profit think tank, the Center for Health Transformation (CHT), still promotes the concept on its website, writing, “Anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year must purchase health insurance or post a bond.”

But since the requirement is also included in the Affordable Care Act, presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is against it and believes it to be unconstitutional. During an interview with the Union Leader on Monday, he announced that despite the long public record, he actually “never focused on it much on the federal level”:

GINGRICH: I never focused on it much on the federal level. I talked about it at the center, at the state level and what we were trying to solve, we just concluded you couldn’t do it, it was too hard…As you work through it, at the time it was designed to block Hillarycare and the more you thought about it, the more you realized, a Congress that can compel you to do something like that, could compel you to do anything. What’s the limit to Congress’ power to dictate your life? And that, I think, will be heart of the argument at the Supreme Court?

Watch it:

The limit is actually fairly clear. The Supreme Court grants the Congress broad deference in regulating the country’s economic activities, so long as the activity is itself economic in nature. And since we all have bodies and they all get old and sick, health care costs are shifted to other payers throughout the country. In 2008, the government spent $43 billion providing uncompensated care to uninsured individuals. In that sense, even the failure to buy a product constitutes an “economic activity.”

The Kaiser Family Foundation is out with this helpful brief explaining what the failure of the super committee could mean for health care spending. As a reminder, the Budget Control Act of 2011 includes a sequestration mechanism of cuts that go into effect if lawmakers fail to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years — the reductions are in addition to the savings already included in the Affordable Care Act, which are “projected to reduce aggregate spending by 6 percent over the 10 year period.”

But if lawmakers don’t produce a proposal before January 15, 2012, “the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would calculate the sequestered amounts that would be needed to ensure that savings total $1.2 trillion for FY2013 to FY2021,” including a 2 percent reduction every year from 2013 to 2021 to the provider side of Medicare spending. A report from Avalere estimates that hospitals will bear the brunt of the cuts and could face a 32 percent reduction to inpatient hospital care. Medicare Advantage plans, physicians, nursing homes, and home health agencies would could also be trimmed, though Medicare benefits, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Medicaid will not be affected.

The sequestration will apply to any mandatory spending not specifically exempted, meaning that health reform provisions like grants to states for establishing exchanges, the public health prevention fund, and mandatory funding for community health centers could all be vulnerable to reductions. In August, Republicans claimed to have identified at least 15 ACA provisions that could be subject to cuts. And that’s not all. As the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff explains, doctors participating in the Medicare program could also see an additional 27 percent reduction in reimbursement at the beginning of next year as a result of the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR).

Health care lobbyists are already working over lawmakers to soften the effects of the trigger, to be sure, and if their past success in patching up the SGR is any indicator, the triggers may very well change before any of the cuts go into effect.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) faults the Democrats’ refusal to accept partial Medicare privatization for the super committee’s inability to come up with a bipartisan plan to lower spending in today’s Wall Street Journal. He writes, “Democrats on the committee made it clear that the new spending called for in the president’s health law was off the table” and pretends that the spending in the Affordable Care Act added to the deficit (it actually reduces it). “Republicans offered to negotiate a plan on the other two health-care entitlements—Medicare and Medicaid—based upon the reforms included in the budget the House passed earlier this year,” he continues and lays out the premium support proposal offered by Alice Rivlin and Pete Domenici:

The Medicare reforms would make no changes for those in or near retirement. Beginning in 2022, beneficiaries would be guaranteed a choice of Medicare-approved private health coverage options and guaranteed a premium-support payment to help pay for the plan they choose….These seniors would be able to choose from a list of Medicare-guaranteed coverage options, similar to the House budget’s approach—except that Rivlin-Domenici would continue to include a traditional Medicare fee-for-service plan among the options.

This approach was also rejected by committee Democrats.

The Congressional Budget Office, the Medicare trustees, and the Government Accountability Office have each repeatedly said that our health-care entitlements are unsustainable. Committee Democrats offered modest adjustments to these programs, but they were far from sufficient to meet the challenge. And even their modest changes were made contingent upon a minimum of $1 trillion in higher taxes—a move sure to stifle job creation during the worst economy in recent memory.

Hensarling doesn’t mention that the Rivlin-Domenici premium-support proposal doesn’t so much lower national health care spending as it shifts it to the beneficiary. The plan reduces the federal contribution to Medicare by capping costs for each beneficiary and offering premium support credits that won’t keep up with actual health care spending. The federal government spends less, but seniors will pay more out of pocket for health care benefits every year. The proposal also breaks up the market clout of traditional Medicare and rather than ratcheting up some of efficiencies and payment reforms in the Affordable Care Act, it sets the nation on an untested path of private competition — leaving seniors vulnerable to the manipulations of for-profit health insurers.

Democrats, for their part, offered rather substantial concessions on Medicare spending. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities argued, the Democrats’ $3 trillion deficit proposal to the super committee “stands well to the right of plans by the co-chairs of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission and the Senate’s ‘Gang of Six,’ and even further to the right of the plan by the bipartisan Rivlin-Domenici commission.” The plan contained “substantially smaller revenue increases than those bipartisan proposals while, for example, containing significantly deeper cuts in Medicare and Medicaid than the Bowles-Simpson plan.” For instance, Bowles-Simpson offered $383 billion in Medicare and Medicaid, while Democrats put $475 billion on the table.

President Obama introduced $320 billion in health care savings, mostly from the pharmaceutical industry and other providers, including rural hospitals, teaching hospitals, and biotechnology firms. But the plan even incorporated the GOP’s push for greater means testing in Medicare, asking some wealthier beneficiaries to pay more for coverage and sought to give beneficiaries “skin in the game” — as the GOP puts it — to discourage over treatment.

All of these are significant concessions — as are the health cuts included in the trigger mechanism — but Hensarling and Republicans aren’t interested in bipartisan agreement. They’re not accepting anything short of Medicare privatization.

Mitt Romney told Sean Hannity last night that he’s a “businessman conservative” in the John Adams and Ronald Reagan traditions and described his Massachusetts health care plan as a “conservative” proposal that he “learned about” from the Heritage Foundation and Newt Gingrich in 1993:

ROMNEY: And I know that health care is one of those issues. The Massachusetts healthcare plan. But don’t forget, this healthcare plan was something we learned about from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Even Newt Gingrich supported the idea of an individual mandate, insisting on personal responsibility. Now, what we did isn’t perfect. Some parts of it worked, some didn’t, some things I change. But it’s not like it was a liberal idea. It was a conservative concept. I’m proud of the fact we did something that worked with our state consistent with the Tenth amendment. I’m also proud of the fact that I’m out there saying I’ll get rid of Obamacare. I know why it’s bad. I know how it’s different than what we did and why it needs to be taken off the books of the US — of the entire nation.”

Watch it:

This is an important point because if Gingrich — who in 1993 said, “I am for people, individuals–exactly like automobile insurance–individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance” — and Heritage served as a model for Romneycare, then his distinction between state and federal mandates is moot. Both advocated for a national rather than a state requirement to purchase health insurance coverage, as did the numerous Republican senators who saw the national mandate as a viable alternative to so-called Hillarycare in 1993. In fact, Romney himself praised the idea as recently as June of 2009, when he endorsed the Wyden-Bennett health care plan (which also included a national requirement to purchase coverage). “You look at Wyden-Bennett,” he said on NBC. “That’s a health care plan that a number of Republicans think is a very good health care plan — one that we support. Take a look at that one.”

So, Romney is confirming that he was motivated by national proponents of the individual mandate to design and sign legislation that incorporated the requirement in Massachusetts. He advocated for “personal responsibility” on the national level — repeatedly — before responding to the growing Republican frustration with Obamacare by adopting the tenther argument. The alternative explanation — one you would have to swallow if you’re to believe that Romney has always been a states’ rights man — is that Romney was inspired by an unconstitutional federal mandate that he legitimized by adopting it on the state level and then accidentally advocated for the very same kind of national reform. That’s an “oops” that even Perry couldn’t rival.