Gov. Rick Perry (R) — whose home state of Texas has the highest uninsurance rate in the nation — told a crowd in Saint Anselm College this afternoon that “everyone in the state of Texas has access to health care, everyone in America has access to health care,” adding, “from the stand point of all people in this country, our government requires that everyone is covered.” Watch it:

Perry is referring to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act or (EMTALA), a law Ronald Reagan signed, which requires hospitals that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding to treat patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of legal status or ability to pay. But EMTALA only applies to medical emergencies. “So, yes, if you’re actively giving birth, you can expect to receive care at an emergency room,” Austin Frakt and Aaron Carroll explain. “If you’re actively having a heart attack, you can also get emergency room care. If you’ve been seriously harmed in a car accident, you can go to the emergency room.”

Patients with chronic conditions that don’t require emergency interference, however — the millions of Americans with diabetes who need “regular access to medication to stay alive,” asthma patients, or women diagnosed with breast cancer — would not be able to find needed treatments under the Act and Perry himself would not have received the care or back surgery he needed under the “requirement.” Fortunately, he has benefited from years of tax payer funded health insurance coverage as governor and seems to believe that other Texans have as well.

Conservatives have been up in arms ever since the Obama administration announced that all health insurers will be required to cover birth control and other women’s health services without charging co-pays. GOP Rep. Steve King (IA) warned that free birth control would make America a “dying civilization,” while Fox contributors mused that it was a liberal conspiracy to “eradicate the poor,” and chided women who use it to just “stop having irresponsible sex.”

Now some Republicans and religious groups have adopted a new meme for attacking government subsidized birth control, claiming it’s religious persecution against Christians. The Catholic bishops, “one of this country’s largest and well funded lobby groups,” say that the birth control mandate violates Church teaching, and Fox News has gleefully picked up the argument. Fox hosts Steve Doocy and Neil Cavuto ran segments with titles like “Anti-Catholic Administration? Critics Complain About Admin’s Policies” — disguising conservatives’ assault on women’s rights as a matter of religious freedom.

That’s despite the fact that the administration included a “conscience clause” to the new rule — essentially a caveat allowing “religious institutions that offer insurance to their employees the choice of whether or not to cover contraception services.” The provision mirrors the most common exemption in the 28 states that already require employers to offer contraceptive coverage if they cover other prescription drugs and devices.

It’s a bit hard to follow the logic of religious groups that say non-Church members using birth control somehow infringes on Christians’ rights or to believe that religious organizations are terribly oppressed in more than half of the nation. Providing access to safe, effective contraception is actually the best thing government could do to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. But some Christian groups believe that birth control is tantamount to abortion and have been pushing to have it criminalized through “personhood” legislation.

Disappointingly, the Obama administration is considering caving to the demands of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and other far right religious groups that want him to significantly expand the exemption to include all religiously affiliated entities and potentially deny affordable contraception to the millions of women who are employed by these organizations.

An overwhelming majority of Americans — 78 percent — support government subsidized birth control and almost 99 percent of women rely on it (in fact, just 2 percent of sexually active Catholic women have not used some form of modern contraception). Yet the line of attack conservatives have chosen illustrates their habit of making themselves the victims of the story, instead of the people aggressively trying to impose their religious doctrine onto others and constrain women’s choices.

GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich insists that a national health insurance mandate is unconstitutional, claiming that if lawmakers can ask Americans to purchase health insurance coverage, then Congress “could compel you to do anything.” But the former speaker had in fact supported a national requirement as recently as 2007, and in 2005 made a strong case not just for the provision but also for a “transfer of finances” to help extend coverage to lower income Americans.

Below is an excerpt from a health care debate with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton:

GINGRICH: Some aspect of the working poor has to involve transfer of finances. To ask people in the lowest paying jobs to bear the full burden of their health insurance is just irrational, it’s not going to happen…One of my conclusions in the last six years, funding the Center for Health Transformation, and looking at what our system is, unless you have 100 percent coverage, you can’t have the right preventive care and you can’t have a rational system. [...]

If I see someone who’s earning over $50,000 a year, who has made the calculated decision not to buy health insurance. I’m looking at someone who’s absolutely as irresponsible as anybody who is ever on welfare….I’m actually in favor of saying, whatever the appropriate income is, you ought to either have health insurance, or you ought to post a bond. But we have no room in this society to have a free rider approach if you’re well off economically to say we’ll cheat our neighbors.

Watch it:

During an interview with the Union Leader last week, Gingrich said he “never focused on [the mandate] much on the federal level” and claimed, in direct contradiction of the above remarks, that his work at the Center for Health Transformation convinced him that a mandate wouldn’t work. “We finally concluded that you couldn’t do it, that it was too hard,” he said of the mandate. That too is inaccurate, since the Center’s website still says, “Anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year must purchase health insurance or post a bond.”

“What may I help you with?” So begins Siri — the unique voice-activated assistant of the iPhone 4s that promises to deliver accurate and tailored answers for your every need. Unless you’re a woman in search of health services like birth control, emergency contraception, abortion, or even mammogram tests. Then the interactive search wizard draws a blank.

As RH Reality Check notes today, Siri “appears to have a blind spot” when asked a few simple, even standard reproductive health questions like “Where can I go to get an abortion?” or “Where can I go for birth control?”:

Q: I am pregnant and do not want to be. Where can I go to get an abortion?

“I’m really sorry about this, but I can’t take any requests right now. Please try again in a little while.”

“Sorry, [my name], I can’t look for places in Tanzania.”

“I don’t see any abortion clinics. Sorry about that.”

Q: I had unprotected sex. Where can I go for emergency contraception?

“Sorry, I couldn’t find any adult retail stores.” This was repeated every time.

Q: I need birth control. Where can I go for birth control?

“I didn’t find any birth control clinics.” [This was repeated every time I asked about birth control, all three times. This is also the answer given when I asked, “What is birth control?”]

When ThinkProgress tried to independently verify Siri’s results on these questions, the responses were largely consistent with what other users reported. Searching for “abortion clinics near me” in D.C. yielded only two results — one “crisis pregnancy center” 24 miles away and another 74 miles away, in Pennsylvania. There are several clinics much closer that offer actual abortion services. Siri offered no results for “where can I find birth control?” or “women’s health clinic,” but she would locate Planned Parenthood centers if asked directly. More disturbingly, Siri would not respond to pleas for help for sexual assault or rape clinics, and services for emergency contraception.
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A new report out today from the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers finds that while state budgets are slowly growing, Medicaid costs “continue to outpace the growth in tax revenue.” From the report:

Factors causing rapid growth in Medicaid costs for states include: increased enrollments (because of both the weak economy and expanded eligibility under health care reform); the elimination of federal funds associated with the enhanced matching rate of state costs from the Recovery Act; and per capita health care costs in general increasing faster than the economy. With Medicaid costs growing significantly and state revenue collections growing at a much slower pace, states are likely to face tight fiscal conditions for the foreseeable future.

Consequently, most states have already tried to contain Medicaid spending by restricting provider reimbursements or reducing certain Medicaid benefits, and are now looking to further expand “managed care and coordinated care options, using health homes for those with chronic conditions, pursuing dual eligible initiatives to provide managed care services for those eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.” For 2012, state budgets “call for a $19.4 billion increase in Medicaid spending, which already accounts for more than a fifth of total spending.”

Some Republicans, including Michele Bachmann, have begun attacking current GOP presidential frontrunner Newt Gingrich on abortion, claiming that the former House Speaker is insufficiently conservative on the issue. Before Thanksgiving, Bachmann accused Gingrich of failing to “uphold a consistently pro-life stance throughout his career in public life” and “stem the flow of taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood.”

If anything, Bachmann’s attacks are an indication of how far the Republican party has shifted, that there is now room on the right to attack Gingrich’s anti-abortion record. As the Des Moines Register’s Jennifer Jacobs notes, the places where Gingrich has fallen short have been mainstream GOP policy positions for decades:

– On abortion: The New York Times on April 10, 1995, reported, “House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Sunday supported the availability of federally financed abortions for poor women who are victims of rape or incest and expressed opposition to organized school prayer, positions that are at odds with many conservatives in his party.” Also asked that year on CBS’s “Face the Nation” whether he agrees with Republicans who oppose federal abortion payments in cases of rape or incest or to protect the life of the mother, Gingrich answered: “No. First of all, I think you should have funding in the case of rape or incest or life of the mother, which is the first step.

– On partial birth abortion: Gingrich addressed the RNC meeting on Jan. 16, 1998, calling for tolerance of candidates who support partial-birth abortion, saying he would campaign for them: “It’s the voters of America who have a right — in some places they’re going to pick people who are to my right, some places they’re going to pick people who are to my left and in both cases, if they’re the Republican nominee, I am going to actively campaign for them.”

– On stem-cell research: On ABC News’ “This Week” on July 8, 2001, Sam Donaldson asked: “So he should approve stem cell research on embryos?” Gingrich answered: “On embryonic cells that, that are pre-fetal.”

Recall that even President George W. Bush — no friend to the pro-choice movement — supported abortion in cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother and his father had been an outspoken proponent of family planning earlier in his career. As a congressman, the elder Bush advocated for family planning services to be available to every woman, calling it a “public health matter,” championed Title X funding, lobbied President Richard Nixon to enact the program, and described family planning as an effort “that help[s] further work of such worldwide importance, something for which this country can be justly proud.” In 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan even signed “one of the nation’s most liberal abortion laws, which permitted abortion in cases of rape or incest or to save the mother’s life.”