Fantasy In, Fantasy Out

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who advised the McCain presidential campaign in 2008, had a devastatating op-ed piece in the New York Times over the weekend on "the real arithmetic of health care reform." Bottom line: "The health care reform legislation would raise, not lower, federal deficits, by $562 billion." I guess a left-winger would say that's still pretty cheap for covering 40 million more people for multiple years -- about $12,500 per newly covered person. But that's not the public case that has been made -- the public case that the administration has been making is that this is needed for deficit reduction.