Tribune Editorial

As Democrats prepare to bring their health care reform bill to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, it is time for Americans to decide whether they support it and why. We support it because it holds the promise of bringing health insurance to tens of millions of Americans who do not have it today.

This won't come cheap. It will cost about $1 trillion, which is still a lot of money, even in this year when trillion has become the new billion. Frankly, we worry about that cost, even though the Congressional Budget Office says the bill would be self-funding, meaning that it would not add to federal budget deficits. In the best of circumstances, financial forecasting is an inexact science, and when a complex piece of federal legislation has as many interlocking parts and assumptions as this one does, it's impossible. We realize that this bill is something of a leap of faith.