Last week, White House chief economist Christina Romer told reporters that there are "billion-dollar bills lying on the sidewalk" in America's health care system -- apparently there for the taking if only Washington would show the will to pick them up.

As a presidential candidate and now as president, Barack Obama has promised both universal access to health care and big savings to taxpaying households. That doesn't make a lot of sense because usually when you buy more of something, the price tag increases, but Washington seems not to have noticed.

There's a circular logic to the illogical proposition. Obama's Council of Economic Advisers (headed by Romer) issued a report on June 2, "The Economic Case for Health Care Reform," that concluded: "The central finding of this report is that genuine health care reform has substantial benefits." You have to marvel at the ability of political staffers to congratulate themselves on great successes even before their plan has been adopted.

The report does a fine job of outlining the arguments in favor of containing health care costs. Every year, the rise in these costs eats more out of workers' paychecks. For some readers, premium inflation means that their take-home pay cannot keep pace with inflation and thus they are effectively suffering a pay cut. To make matters worse, many employees also are paying higher co-payments for health care. Obviously, if Obama can put the brakes on this runaway health cost train, workers, employers and taxpayers will benefit.

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But can he make health care universal -- that is, expand health care coverage to more Americans -- and still save taxpayers money without cutting back on the level of care that most Americans now enjoy? Continued...