Broader Medicaid eligibility does not reduce costs; it shifts costs to the poor through paltry access and low-quality care. The bill would not cost $900 billion; it would cost more than $2 trillion. The bill would not reduce the deficit; it would expand the deficit by creating new government health programs, which always cost more than projected. The cuts to Medicare and Medicaid will never happen because Congress will negate them later, just as Congress is currently trying to negate the 'standard growth rate' cuts to Medicare physician payments. Finally, the bill would force taxpayers to fund abortions and would insure undocumented aliens.

Where's a death panel when you need one?

Unfortunately, House Democrats have since decided that dishonesty is the better strategy. They, like their Senate counterparts, now plan to strip that additional Medicare spending out of health "reform" and enact it separately. (Democrats are already trying to exempt that spending from pay-as-you-go rules, making it easier for them to expand our record federal deficits.) Why enact it separately? Because excising that spending from the "reform" legislation reduces the cost of health "reform"! That and the other fibs in the Senate's reform bill hide more than half of the measure's true cost—which any serious reading would put at closer to $2 trillion.

The only good news may be this: if the dishonest budget gimmick succeeds, then Congress will have "fixed" Medicare's physician payments. Absent that "must pass" legislation, the Democrats health care takeover would lose momentum, and would have to stand on its own merit. That would be good for the Republic, though not for the legislation.

The Baucus bill will not reduce the deficit, and it would ultimately cost taxpayers more than $2 trillion—just like every other bill Congress has produced so far.

The biggest gimmick employed by the bill is that its individual mandate pushes more than half of the legislation's cost off-budget, and onto businesses and individuals who will have to shoulder that burden. A real-world parallel already exists in the Massachusetts health care plan, where private-sector mandates account for 60 percent of the cost. In 1994, CBO counted those mandated private payments in the federal budget, and it helped kill the Clinton health plan. This time around, Democrats were very careful to craft their mandates so that they just barely avoided having the CBO include those payments in the federal budget. But the CBO's decision does not change the fact that those private-sector mandates are part of the cost of this bill.

The second-biggest gimmick is assuming that Congress will let the "Sustainable Growth Rate" cuts in Medicare physician payments to occur. Starting in 2003, Congress has repeatedly blocked those cuts, and there is no reason to think that Congress will behave any differently in the future. So yes, provided that the sun rises in the West, the Baucus bill would reduce the federal deficit.

When the Obama administration says, "We're going to create a co-op," what they mean is, "We're going to create a new government health program but we will turn it over to the members in five years. We promise."