Ramesh Ponnuru has written the kind of column that really undermines the credibility of conservatives who thump their chests about reducing federal spending and insist that any new law must be paid for. Because it proves — yet again — that even if lawmakers jump through hoops and spend months agreeing to a combination of spending cuts and fees that result in deficit reduction, the GOP will either argue that the Democrats tricked the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) into producing a favorable score or just make up a lot of false arguments about the resulting pay-for provisions.

Ponnuru relies on the latter technique in this Bloomberg piece, in which he goes after the Affordable Care Act’s tax on medical devices, claiming that the fee would produce less jobs and undermine medical innovation:

A year from now, the federal government will start collecting a new tax on medical devices from tongue depressors to imaging machines, thanks to the sweeping health-care overhaul that Democrats enacted in the spring of 2010. People in the industry say it’s already having an effect. [...]

Device makers complain that the tax will lead not only to higher prices and layoffs but also to reduced research and development. They also say that when combined with high U.S. corporate-tax rates, the device levy makes relocation to other countries more appealing. Ireland, for one, is actively recruiting medical- device makers to move production there.

The main reason Congress included the tax in the health- care legislation was, of course, to raise money. Democrats wanted the Congressional Budget Office to certify that the bill would reduce the deficit overall. But why go after one industry in particular? The justification for this selectivity was that the legislation would be a boon for this sector. By expanding health coverage, the new law would increase demand for medical devices and thus, in effect, subsidize the industry. The tax was, therefore, a partial clawback of this subsidy.

Ponnuru must know that the fee was not intended to target the medical device industry specifically, but was just one of many provisions that sought to ask the sectors of health care — from hospitals to insurers to pharmaceuticals — that would benefit from reform to contribute towards expanding coverage to (almost) all Americans. In fact, these provisions came about after conservatives, Republicans, and moderate Democrats defeated a whole host other cost-cutting deficit-reducing mechanisms — from the public option to a national exchange — and for them to now present the resulting compromise as some kind of attack on medical devices is intellectually dishonest to say the least.

That being said, the specific charges in Ponnuru’s piece are highly misleading. First, the device tax excludes common consumer products like eye glasses, contact lenses, and “any other medical device determined by the Secretary to be of a type which is generally purchased by the general public at retail for individual use” — so as to minimize the cost-shift to consumers. Companies also cannot avoid the fee by moving manufacturing to Ireland, like Ponnuru suggests, since the fee applies to products produced in, or imported in the United States. Finally, it’s not clear that that tax would result in any significant hardship for the ever-profitable medical device industry. As Abbot Labs CEO Miles White explained during a conference call in June of 2010, “I’m not terribly optimistic that we’re going to pass along much at all to tell you the truth because it’s an extremely competitive market, and I haven’t seen for example in the vascular business that there is opportunity for price increase. You have to innovate. And you have to innovate with real value in order to maintain pricing or value.” “I tend to agree with Miles, but it’s not, and it doesn’t happen until 2013 and the amount of number is just not that large for us,” CFO Thomas Freyman added.

Newt Gingrich previewed his attacks against Romneycare during a press conference in Iowa this afternoon, repeatedly hitting the former Massachusetts governor for signing legislation that allowed for tax-payer funding of abortion and “includes a requirement that an advisory panel appoint one member from Planned Parenthood.” Gingrich predicted that South Carolina’s conservative primary voters, who go to the ballot on Jan. 21, would break for him once they “learn that [Romney] put Planned Parenthood by law into Romneycare, they learn that he has tax-payed abortions as part of Romneycare,” the former speaker said. He also deflected any suggestion that he himself carries health care baggage that Republican voters oppose:

Q: How would you go forward attacking Obamacare? You have at one point supported an individual mandate, like Mitt Romney…but how would your strategy going forward be different?

GINGRICH: It’s real easy. I said, we looked at it, we studied it, we concluded it was wrong. And unlike Romney, I’ve concluded it was wrong — he is still defending it. Nobody at the White House said they relied on Gingrichcare to design Obamacare. They have said very clearly they relied on Romneycare. They actually had Romney staff in the White House helping design Obamacare. None of my staff were invited.

Watch a compilation:

Indeed, uninsured Massachusetts residents below 300 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) can participate in the state-subsidized Commonwealth Care program, where members receive health services by enrolling in health plans which cover a comprehensive package of benefits like “doctor’s visits, surgery, radiology and lab” and abortion services. The package of services was not specifically developed or approved by Romney — in fact he vetoed a provision for essential health benefits — but he has previously described the law as a whole as “the ultimate pro-life effort.” Section 16M (a) of Romney’s health care law, however, does state: “There shall be a MassHealth payment policy advisory board. The board shall consist of…1 member appointed by Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.”

Gingrich actually supported various provisions that were ultimately included in Obamacare until as recently as last year and even praised Romneycare in a 2006 newsletter, saying, “The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to affect major change in the American health system. We agree entirely with Governor Romney and Massachusetts legislators that our goals should be 100 percent insurance coverage for all Americans.”

Newt Gingrich explicitly told a voter in Iowa this afternoon that he opposes all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest, joining fellow GOP presidential candidates Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry in staking out the most radical position on a woman’s right to choose. Gingrich did promise to form programs that would provide counseling to women who find themselves in such situations:

Q: I know you’re pro-life, but do you make exceptions for rape and incest?

GINGRICH: No, I wouldn’t make exceptions. What I would try to do is create a program that would enable women in those circumstances to have support and help them through whatever process they needed both in terms of counseling and in terms of if they wanted to give up the baby for adoption.

Watch it:

Gingrich has repeatedly said that he believes that life begins at conception, and even endorsed a federal personhood amendment. He has, however, previously supported exemptions for rape and incest, telling CBS’ Face the Nation in 1995, “I think you should have funding in the case of rape or incest or life of the mother, which is the first step.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act will serve as the greatest highlight for health care news in 2012, but this year federal and state governments will also implement 10 new provisions of the law that seek to improve the efficiency and quality of the health care system. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s Health Care Reform Source has the list here — be sure to click over to the page for an extended explanation of each provision:

Most of these programs seek to change the way the government pays for health care — moving away from fee-for-service to a more sustainable system where quality is valued over quantity and innovative health care providers are rewarded for their efficiencies. These are the kind of changes that can’t compete with the mandate or Medicad expansion for news coverage, but are crucial for bending the health care cost curve. They are also generally supported by members of both political parties.

Rick Santorum reiterated his belief that states should have the right to outlaw contraception during an interview with ABC News yesterday, saying, “The state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have.” Watch the Jake Tapper interview:

Santorum has long opposed the Supreme Court’s 1965 ruling “that invalidated a Connecticut law banning contraception” and has also pledged to completely defund federal funding for contraception if elected president. As he told CaffeinatedThoughts.com editor Shane Vander Hart in October, “One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country,” the former Pennsylvania senator explained. “It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

But an overwhelming majority of Americans — virtually all women (more than 99 percent ) aged 15–44 have used at least one contraceptive method — rely on contraceptives to prevent unintended pregnancies and limit the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases. In fact, the Guttmacher Institute estimates that contraceptive services provided at publicly funded clinics helped prevent almost two million unintended pregnancies. Without funding from Medicaid and Title X, “abortions occurring in the United States would be nearly two-thirds higher among women overall and among teens; the number of unintended pregnancies among poor women would nearly double.”

Last month, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney both enthusiastically endorsed Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-OR) and Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Medicare premium support plan — a wonky middle-ground between Ryan’s goal of complete Medicare privatization and the Democrats’ reliance on the growing market power of traditional Medicare to drive innovation in the health care system. Under the proposal, seniors would receive a voucher to purchase insurance from an exchange of private plans or Medicare.

During a town hall event in Iowa yesterday, surging GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum threw his support behind Wyden/Ryan plan, but bemoaned its key compromise — the provision to preserve traditional Medicare:

SANTORUM: One of the things I liked about the Ryan/Wyden plan and why I’ve endorsed it — even though I have a problem with the public option part that Ron Wyden has insisted on, it is a plan that says innovation with insurance companies and consumers drive down costs, instead of having this government-run Medicare system. [...] You have Medicare driving the entire health care system in this country and it’s crushing it.

Watch it:

Santorum is a strong supporter of Ryan’s original Medicare privatization scheme to completely eliminate traditional Medicare as an option for seniors and has promised to accelerate its implementation. Medicare, however, has a better track record of controlling health care costs than private insurers and has introduced market innovations and payment reforms that private plans later adopted. Medicare’s smaller administrative spending and its ability to use its sheer size and clout to bargain for cheaper services explain this advantage. In fact, “if Medicare costs had risen as fast as private insurance premiums, it would cost around 40 percent more than it does. If private insurers had done as well as Medicare at controlling costs, insurance would be a lot cheaper.”

Scott Keyes contributed to this report from Iowa.