IN THE WORLD according to Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), setting Medicare payment levels for doctors has nothing to do with health reform. Really. "Correcting the Medicare doctors' payment discrepancy is a budgetary problem -- health insurance reform tackles a serious regulatory problem," Reid's office said in a statement. "That's why we need to fix the Medicare doctors' payments first, outside of health reform."

Where to start with this? First off, $247 billion -- the 10-year cost of the fix -- is one whopper of a "discrepancy." Dealing with that "discrepancy" amounts to more than one-quarter of the cost of health reform. President Obama has vowed that health reform will not add a single dime to the deficit -- but he is...