Mitt Romney made the astounding claim that he doesn’t “know anyone among Republicans who’s talking about cutting [Medicare]” during his interview with the Des Moines Register this afternoon and portrayed President Obama as the only President to make cuts in the program:

ROMNEY: Medicare gets cut by $500 billion. This is something, the president is going to hear about, all right? Because the only person I know of to ever cut Medicare is President Obama, by $500 billion to fund Obamacare. Republicans are talking about how to preserve Medicare as an option down the road to make it fiscally sustainable, I don’t know anyone among Republicans who’s talking about cutting it. The only person who’s cut Medicare for current Medicare recipients is President Obama.

Watch it:

But the former Massachusetts governor is wrong on both counts. Many presidents have made changes to Medicare since 1965, including Republican idol Ronald Reagan. Reagan instituted a series of reforms that are strikingly similar to some of the payment changes included in the Affordable Care Act (policies Romney now refers to as cuts or price controls.) For instance, Reagan adopted DRGs or Diagnosis Related Groups for paying hospitals more efficiently. As a result of the changes, Medicare saved $49 billion by 1986, far exceeding what even the Congressional Budget Office had predicted.

If Romney is looking for more modern examples of Medicare cuts he should consider his own Medicare proposal to “fundamentally transform” traditional Medicare into Medicare 2.0. That plan would lower the federal government’s contribution to the program — read: cut — by providing future enrollees with a voucher to purchase public or private health care coverage and capping its growth every year. Romney could also find cuts to Medicare in Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, which he’s now actively touting. It preserves the $500 billion in Medicare savings that are part of the Affordable Care Act

During a town hall in Cedar Rapids Iowa this morning, Mitt Romney doubled down on his support for Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Medicare privatization plan, which would essentially eliminate traditional Medicare for all future enrollees and force them to buy private insurance with a voucher. “I spent a good deal of time with Congressman Ryan. When his plan came out, I applauded it, as an important step,” he said. “We’re going to have to make changes like the ones Paul Ryan proposed.”

The former Massachusetts governor also echoed his campaign’s attacks against current GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich, noting, “this is a place where Speaker Gingrich and I disagree. He called this right wing social engineering, I believe it’s a very important step to protect Medicare.” But in applauding Ryan’s plan, Romney also distinguished his campaign proposal from it, by explaining that “it’s pretty similar to Paul Ryan’s. What I added what he did not in his first proposal, was the option of purchasing, if you wanted to, standard Medicare.” Incidentally, Gingrich is proposing the same option.

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Uwe Reinhardt has a new food-for-thought blog post in the New York Times this morning, suggesting an alternative to the contentious (and unpopular) individual health insurance mandate. Using the German health care system as a model, Reinhardt argues that rather than encouraging younger and healthier enrollees (who would otherwise go without coverage until they become sick) to purchase insurance by leveling a penalty up front, the government can offer everyone the following choice:

1. joining the community-rated health insurance offered through the insurance exchanges called for in the Affordable Care Act;

2. remaining in a private insurance system that is free to charge in any year “actuarially fair” premiums, that is, premiums that reflect the applicant’s projected health status and spending for that year and is free to refuse issuing a policy altogether;

3. simply self-insuring, by remaining uninsured? [...]

For want of better terms, we might call the exchange system the “social insurance track” (because it leans heavily toward social insurance) and the second and third options the “rugged individualist tracks,” because they cater to Americans with individualist preferences. For people choosing the rugged individualist tracks, Professor Starr proposes to shut the door to the social insurance track for only five years.

I believe his stricture is too weak and propose instead to follow the German example by shutting the door permanently to social insurance to any individual who chose one of the two rugged individualist tracks, unless such individuals were truly pauperized. A return then would have to be allowed, because, for better or for worse, our civic sentiments preclude letting anyone – even a myopic rugged individualist — die for want of critically needed health care.

So an individual can opt-out of insurance and pay a penalty for enrolling at a later date. The policy may be worth considering, but it’s not without its problems: if younger people stay out of the risk pool, costs will increase for those who purchase coverage and will rise even more if that population only buys coverage once it falls ill. And of course, how can we properly do prevention if a good size of the population will only seek health care when they become so sick that paying the penalty is worth it? The Germans seem to make it work, but they have a long history — and culture — of universal insurance. We don’t.

This holiday season, anti-abortion activists in several states are renewing one of their favorite traditions: harassing women in front of family planning clinics with mean-spirited Christmas carols.

RH Reality Check reports on the antics of Pro-Life Wisconsin:

Yes, for the few days leading up to Christmas, Pro-Life Wisconsin has pledged to deck the halls, or at least the sidewalks, of Wisconsin clinics with Christmas carols for the “empty mangers” that will exist due to abortion.

Via their website: Last year’s Empty Manger Christmas Caroling effort was so popular, we’re doing it again this year, and in more cities to boot!

What better way to bring the joy of Christmas to a place where hopelessness abounds?

Meanwhile, the Pro-Life League’s website lists a jam-packed schedule of anti-abortion Christmas caroling in the Chicago area. Events are also listed in Birmingham, Alabama, and several California cities.

In the true spirit of the holidays, women who need help from reproductive clinics will now have face a swarm of religious ideologues who have turned their condemnation into song for the occasion.

As Mitt Romney’s surrogates attacked Newt Gingrich for failing to fully endorse Paul Ryan’s Medicare privatization plan, the pro-Romney Restore Our Future PAC has launched a new ad in Iowa targeting the former House speaker for his 30 years as a Washington insider and his multiple positions on several issues, including his past support for a national individual health insurance mandate:

And Newt was a long-time supporter of a national health insurance mandate, the centerpiece of Obamacare. Maybe that’s why George Will called Gingrich, “the least conservative candidate.”

Watch it:

The Romney attacks are peculiar because the “baggage” Gingrich is accused of carrying is also borne by the Massachusetts governor. In fact, both candidates have almost identical positions on both the Ryan plan — they generally support it, but would still allow seniors to spend their premium vouchers in traditional Medicare — and the individual health insurance mandate.

Romney first touted what he described as “the ultimate conservative idea” to reducing Massachusetts’ uncompensated care costs in 2005, and suggested that all able bodied residents should take “personal responsibility” for their own health care spending. He initially proposed that families and individuals who did not purchase coverage would be required to spend $10,000 in the form of a bond that could be used to pay for hospital care down the road, which is precisely the kind of plan Gingrich endorsed as recently as May of 2011. “I’ve said consistently we ought to have some requirement to either have health insurance or you post a bond or in some way you indicate you are going to be held accountable,” Gingrich said earlier this year.

And in case you still think that there is some day light between Romney and Gingrich, recall that the former Massachusetts governor repeatedly advocated the mandate as a national solution, telling Newsweek in December of 2007, “If Massachusetts succeeds in implementing it, then that will be a model for the nation.” He reiterated this belief to NBC just a couple of days later: “I think you’re going to find when it’s all said and done, after all these states that are the laboratories of democracy, get their chance to try their own plans, but those who follow the path that we pursued will find it’s the best path, and we’ll end up with a nation that’s taken a mandate approach.”

Romney is attacking Gingrich for the same policy he once supported — right down to the details.