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That's the question I'm left after reading House Minority Leader John Boehner's latest ludicrous complaint about health care reform. The Senate bill, he says, will institute "a monthly abortion premium will be charged of all enrollees in the government-run health plan."

Boehner writes: "It’s right there beginning on line 11, page 122, section 1303, under 'Actuarial Value of Optional Service Coverage.'  The premium will be paid into a U.S. Treasury account – and these federal funds will be used to pay for the abortion services."

Let's nail the coffin lid shut on this nonsense right away. The law does not do that, and even a cursory reading of the cited language (you can read the entire bill here) makes it clear that the purpose of the section is to instruct insurance providers that do cover abortion services to segregate those costs from policy holders requesting such coverage into a separate account to ensure that federal subsidies are not used to cover abortion services.

Boehner is the House Minority Leader of the Republican Party. He should know how to read legislation. Yet he got this one absolutely, monumentally wrong.

So, either he's being intellectually dishonest, attempting to ramp up more uninformed hysteria about health care reform, or he's too stupid to be in such a position of responsibility.

In either case, Republicans should be ashamed to call this man a leader in their party.

(Hat tip: Talking Points Memo)

Update: More reprehensible scaremongering and lies from the Republicans on this bill. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, is claiming that the Senate health care bill adds a tax for breast reconstruction following a mastectomy. The claim is absolutely, 100 percent false. The bill does add a tax for elective plastic surgery, but specifically exempts surgery "necessary to ameliorate a deformity arising from, or directly related to, a congenital abnormality, a personal injury resulting from an accident or trauma, or disfiguring disease."

It's a sad state of affairs. Apparently, Republicans cannot debate this legislation on the merits, and are thus forced, as they have been from the beginning with the "death panel" nonsense, to resort to easily debunked lies. It's pathetic.

Monday, we'll write that there is one real and immediate threat to Medicare patients that is part of the health care debate: Republicans and some fiscal hawks among Senate Democrats are balking at a measure to avert a 21 percent cut in payments to doctors starting in January. Such a drastic reduction in reimbursement rates could cause doctors to quit seeing patients on Medicare.

There's a very good piece up at Politico that dispels some of the common misconceptions about the health care reform bills. It's not a response to people who just hate the reform efforts and spin ludicrous stories about it.  Rather, it addresses what some supporters think it will do and explains why they are wrong. It also predicts possible backlash against the effort if it passes and doesn't meet people's false expectations.

The Votemaster sums up some of the points in an equally good analysis of the Politico article:

Here are some of the most common misconceptions.

• Everyone can choose the public option (No: only about 30 million will be allowed to).
• Everyone can use the new exchanges (No: only the self-employed and the poor can).
• The new choices take effect immediately (No: they start in 2013).
• There is a big fine if you don't have insurance (No: zero until 2014; $750 in 2017).

It's worth your time to look these pieces over. Better that we debate what's actually in the bills than what people only wish/fear are in them.

Short takes

Quick views on some of the week's news.

The winter forecast: clear roads

The revenue-starved Virginia Department of Transportation took a lot of heat this summer when it cut costs in part by closing almost a score of rest stops along interstates in the Old Dominion. The uproar would be but trifling, though, compared to the cold fury of a public immobilized by snow and ice this winter. ...

New Horizons, indeed

The Rev. Bill Lee's dream of bringing health care access to medically underserved Northwest Roanoke has been a steadily growing reality for more than 10 years.

The Kuumba Community Health & Wellness Center, incorporated in 1999 and run briefly out of the basement of his Loudon Avenue Christian Church, became a full-blown medical facility the next year when it moved into a warren of trailers on Melrose Avenue. In 2007, the federally subsidized community health center, renamed New Horizons Healthcare, moved into the Valley View Medical Center. ...

The Tea Partying GOP loathes compromise

Sen. Lindsey Graham finds himself on the wrong side of the Tea Partyers. In his home state of South Carolina, the Charleston County Republican Party this week approved a stinging rebuke of their senator. ...

Read more.

Friday, we'll write that Americans should be aware that having end-of-life discussions with their physicians and family is their only way to be assured they can exert some control over the quality of their lives as they near death. The health care reform bill that the House passed last weekend would pay for end-of-life counseling for Medicare patients. This does not threaten "death panels," as reform obstructionists have propagandized, but offers the gift of peace of mind.

We're working on an editorial for Sunday praising the University of Virginia for invading its doctors' privacy.

The university began posting the financial dealings its doctors online to help patients understand any conflicts of interest. The policy could be better - the American Medical Student Association gave it a "B", but said it shouldn't be considered a model policy. But it's a good start towards allowing patients to understand where a doctor's money is coming from so they can decide if it could be impacting, say, prescription decisions.

Tuesday, we'll write that House passage of a health care reform bill is a historic achievement, but one marred by anti-abortion provisions that would not allow federal subsidies for insurance that covers elective abortions -- a restriction likely to extend to many private plans that now include such coverage. The provision is bound to meet tough opposition in the Senate. Final passage of health care reform that at last promises Americans near-universal coverage should not hinge, though, on stripping the restriction.

Carilion makes charity strides

The nonprofit hospital has expanded efforts to identify patients who can't afford to pay.

As a nonprofit hospital, Carilion Clinic has obligations to the community that it serves.

Until last year, Carilion officials thought one way of fulfilling that obligation was hounding people with unpaid medical bills in court.

Read more.

Remember back when the Republicans were complaining a lot about President Obama's budget, then unveiled a budget of their own that was lacking only one thing: numbers?

Well, those rascally Republicans are at it again. Now they've released a health care reform proposal that is lacking only one thing: reform.

The Republican proposal won't ensure insure significantly more people (leaving about 52 million Americans uninsured by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office). It doesn't prevent insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions. Oh, and it doesn't lower the deficit as much as the Democratic plan.

As Matthew Yglesias summed it up, the GOP has come up with a plan that "works better for people who don't need health care services, and much worse for people who actually are sick or who become sick in the future. It's basically a health un-insurance policy."

It's health care benefits sign-up time around here at the RT, where we're still lucky enough to have them, and the talk this year is of edging toward plans that are less costly for people who do what they can to stay healthy. The emphasis is on preventive care: wellness checkups, smoking cessation -- maybe someday a person's BMI, or body mass index, a measure of body fat based on height and weight. Uh-oh.

That, I suppose, is why I had a more than passing interest in a story that ran last week in USA Today: A then-and-now survey of New York City diners showed that the city's pioneering menu-labeling law (which since March 2008 has required chain restaurants to display the number of calories in their menu offerings) has helped the willing cut down. I say the willing because a little more than half the people surveyed said they saw the calorie postings, but only 15 percent said they actually used the information.

Still, those who did bought food that averaged 754 calories for lunch in 2009, compared to 860 calories for those who didn't see the information or ignored it. "The overall calories purchased decreased at nine chains between 2007 and 2009," the newspaper reported, "including dropping significantly at McDonald's, Au Bon Pain, KFC and Starbucks."

The findings are more hopeful than an earlier and much smaller study that suggested that people who noticed the calories and took them into account said they made healthier choices, but actually made worse ones.

Yeow. If only just wanting to could change us.