Judd Gregg admits that the failure of the Affordable Care Act’s long-term health care program CLASS won’t unravel the entire health care law in this morning’s interview with the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff, but the former Republican senator offers some rather surprising explanations of why he included an amendment in the law that requires the program to remain solvent for 75 years. Last week, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius cited Gregg’s provision as a reason for why the government has stopped implementing CLASS. From the interview:

SK: Tell me more about why you decided to offer that amendment.

JG: I knew we weren’t going to kill the CLASS Act because it was Sen. Ted Kennedy’s proposal, and he was very sick, and most of us were very sensitive to the fact he was sick. This was his last hurrah, legislatively. I knew we were going to implement it, although I didn’t think the concept was sound. Conceptually, it makes sense to prefund long-term care insurance…. but what this bill did was just the opposite. It was totally unsound. [...]

SK: Does the end of the CLASS Act say anything about the rest of the health law? Or is this an isolated incident?

JG: This was a sidecar. This was not a core element of the overall bill. It was put in as a courtesy to Sen. Kennedy. I do happen to think the overall bill is going to massively fail on the fiscal side and probably fail on the substantive side too. But you can separate off the CLASS act as not having an effect on the underlying bill, even though the underlying bill will also fail.

This won’t read well to the people who had worked by Kennedy’s side for years trying to build a program that would provide some very basic health care services to people who need help taking care of themselves. Nor should it. Gregg knows full well that the program could work if one were to include a mandate or tinker with the eligibility and premiums to ensure that it attracts enough healthy enrollees to keep it sustainable over the long term. To say that CLASS is a pipe dream included in the law to appease a dying senator is not only offensive but also very untrue.

I’ve debunked Sen. Judd Gregg’s (R-NH) entire Halloween-themed health care editorial here‘ before, but since he’s now expanding on his claims about the causes of rising health insurance premiums, it’s important to give his comments some more play — if only to highlight how far off the ledge he’s fallen.

Last night, Gregg told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, “You’re seeing a massive increase in premium costs, some driven by the cost of health care generally, but a lot driven by the cost of the regulations in this new program.” The deliberate use of “some” and “a lot” suggests that the health care law is driving up premiums faster than health care inflation — an argument that’s so unbelievably false that even the health insurance lobbyists are unwilling to make it:

Robert Zirkelbach of the insurance industry trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans concedes that, despite what some have claimed, the law isn’t the major driver of premium increases for next year. “In fact, the evidence is very clear that the rise in medical costs is a key factor in driving up health insurance premiums,” he says.

But, Zirkelbach says, in some cases, premiums could rise significantly because of new benefits the law requires.

“Many people already have the new benefits that are required in the law as part of their current benefit packages,” he says. “So they’re not going to see [nearly as much of] an impact as people who have chosen less comprehensive policies in exchange for a lower monthly premium.”

On the other hand, Zirkelbach says, “for those people who have less comprehensive benefit packages today, they’re going to see a much larger impact in their premium as a result of health care reform.”

In other words — in a rare glimmer of truth that Zirkelbach’s boss AHIP President and CEO seemed unwilling to concede last month — premiums are increasing for the exact opposite reason than Gregg is suggesting. The new consumer protections in the health care law are at most responsible for one to two percent of the increases; the rest is due to health care inflation and the poor economy. And this is something Gregg has actually admitted before. During an appearance on Fox Business last week, Gregg said, ”Premiums went up by an average of eight to nine percent, it’s estimated that one to two percent of that is directly a result of the health care bill.”

So there you have it. The GOP final health care talking points are so extreme, they have to be reigned in by the very health insurance lobbyists who helped them spin these arguments in the first place.

Outgoing Republican Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) has penned a Halloween-themed editorial advancing some new myths about the Affordable Care Act, all the while implicitly conceding that Republicans will not be able to repeal the law. “Caught in a cobweb of false promises, the American people were fed a story about how health care reform would insure everyone, allow people to keep their own insurance policies and reduce health care spending while improving quality,” Gregg writes. “Sadly, these were fantasies masquerading as fact. The scary tale that follows needs no skeletons or vampires; statistics alone can frighten you.”

Some of Gregg’s ‘scary tale’ has already been debunked by Saturday’s very prescient New York Times editorial and, as it turns out, Gregg’s own TV appearances:

MYTH — HIGHER PREMIUMS: “President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats promised us that the new law would lower premiums. It has not. Premiums in 2011 will rise more than 12 percent for employer-sponsored coverage, according to a recent Hewitt Associates study.”

FACT: That Hewitt study actually found that the new consumer protections in the health care law are at most responsible for 1% to 2% of the 12% increase that’s due to health care inflation and adverse selection, a point Gregg conceded during an appearance on Fox Business last week.”Premiums went up by an average of 8 to 9 percent, it’s estimated that 1 to 2% of that is directly a result of the health care bill,” Gregg told Neil Cavuto.

MYTH — LOSS OF EXISTING COVERAGE: “We were promised that, if we liked our coverage, we could keep it. But we were misled. The Obama administration recently revealed that employees of nearly 70 percent of U.S. businesses, who get coverage through their job, may lose their current health care plan because of the new regulations.”

FACT: Insurers and self insured employers make policy adjustments all the time and over the last few years they’ve been slowly shifting the risks and costs of coverage to the individual. Regulations in the Affordable Care Act will discourage employers and insurers from stiffing beneficiaries with very high costs and insufficient benefits and shield consumers from drastic benefit cuts or cost shifts. If Republicans are successful in repealing these requirements, insurers and employers will be able to avoid abiding by the popular consumer protections, no matter how dramatically they cut benefits, raise co-pays, or lower employer contributions.

MYTH — MCDONALD’S DROPPING COVERAGE: “These workers may lose access to their current benefits because the government will prohibit their employers from offering a plan that is affordable and provides substantive benefits for working families.”

FACT: As the New York Times explained on Saturday, “The administration has granted some 30 waivers for one year (Rush Limbaugh promptly accused the administration of allowing these employers to “break the law”) and has signaled willingness to smooth out other bumps on the road toward full reform.” Republicans, however, are intent on criticizing the administration for addressing this problem.

MYTH — SENIORS AT RISK: “Even seniors are at risk. The Obama administration announced that nearly one million seniors will lose their current Medicare Advantage plans next year.”

FACT: CMS actually projects that 99.7% of seniors will continue to have access to a Medicare Advantage plan and that only a small number of fee-for-service plans will leave the market. This is because of a 2008 bipartisan bill that required issuers to establish provider networks, not the Affordable Care Act. The bill was vetoed by President Bush, but passed again the Senate with a two-thirds majority. Gregg did not support the legislation.

MYTH — INCREASES HEALTH COSTS: “Even the Obama administration’s own actuaries found that health care spending will increase under the new law, consuming an even larger share of our nation’s fragile economy. ”

FACT: This is not what “the Obama administration’s own actuaries found.” They concluded that beginning in 2014, as 30 million+ individuals begin receiving health care coverage and visiting doctors, health care expenditures will naturally increase. Costs will continue to grow higher than current law until around 2015, at which point the Medicare savings, the excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans, and the Medicare payment board will cause costs to “decelerate.” Moreover, the actuaries predict that as a result of these savings, Medicare spending will decline $86.4 billion from previous projections due to reforms. “Specifically, average annual Medicare spending growth is anticipated to be 1.4 percentage points slower for 2012–19 than we projected in February 2010. By 2019, it is projected to grow 7.7 percent—0.9 percentage point more slowly than we projected in February 2010,” the report concludes.

MYTH — INCREASES THE DEBT: “The current pace of government expansion and federal spending is unaffordable and unsustainable. The national debt will double in five years and triple in 10 under the Democrats’ spending plans.”

FACT: The CBO estimates that the law will produce “$143 billion in net budgetary savings over the 2010-2019 period” and reported that repealing the law would increase the debt by that amount.

Significantly, Gregg does not call for repealing the law, as he has in months past. He merely writes, “It is my hope that the next Congress consists of members who will pass reforms that responsibly address our health care needs while improving the economy.” The language is part of an ongoing GOP campaign to temper expectations for repeal.

Outgoing Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) led the fight against the Affordable Care Act in the Senate, but during an appearance on Fox Business last night, Gregg — who has proposed a health bill that’s similar to what Democrats passed in March — disagreed with the Republican strategy of repealing and replacing the law. “Giving the Democrats another shot at health care is like giving an axe murderer another shot with an ax,” Gregg began before endorsing some of the Medicare cuts in the bill and conceding that repealing the law could allow insurers to continue increasing premiums:

CAVUTO: Well, do you worry senator that your party is going to make things worse or maybe provide an opportunity for insurance companies to keep raising premiums because you want to stave the law or delay some of its implementation? And in that gap insurance companies can continue hike, hike, hike, hike!

GREGG: Well, that would be unfortunate if that happened and I’m not going to say that you wouldn’t end up with some gaming of the system that way. But the simple fact is that the plan as structured today isn’t going to work except to push push us into a situation where the government gets expand by 2.5 trillion dollars — 2.5 trillion dollars over the next ten years.

CAVUTO: Would you repeal it or as John Boehner has indicated, starve it?

GREGG: I don’t think starving or repeal is probably the best approach here.

CAVUTO: What would you do?

GREGG: You basically go in and you restructure it. What we did in this proposal, which actually made some sense, was that we restructured the Medicare system in a way that saved half trillion to a trillion dollars for Medicare, out of Medicare. But we took all of that money and we created a brand new entitlement which we under-funded.

Watch it:

As The Hill notes, Gregg has previously supported the GOP’s repeal and replace strategy. “Our view is, you repeal and replace this bill,” Gregg said on CNN in March. “You replace it with better law and better approaches towards healthcare.” He also said on CNBC as recently as last month that using the budget reconciliation process to repeal major parts of healthcare reform were an option, too.

The House GOP has released a ‘Pledge’ that calls for repealing the entire health law, but the party hasn’t always backed this approach. In January, young guns Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) told Politico’s Mike Allen that Republicans “WILL NOT campaign for full health care repeal, but will demand partial repeal, including mandates for health coverage.” More recently, Republicans have tried to temper expectations for what they will be able to achieve if they do win back the House. (H/T: The Hill’s Michael O’Brien)