Ezra Klein points us to a study appearing in The New England Journal of Medicine indicating that Medicare costs are lower for people who had health insurance before enrolling in Medicare. It underscores the fact that in order to address the long term fiscal imbalance, we need to address health care in America.

More evidence for the importance of health coverage comes from a study in The New England Journal of Medicine this month, which tracks what happens when the previously uninsured become eligible for Medicare. It turns out that they -- surprise! -- need a whole lot more care than their demographically similar, but previously insured, brethren!

Congress is back from its week-long July 4th vacation and will, among other things, try to get pass some more spending bills. This week in the House:

• Transportation-HUD is in full Appropriations Committee
• Labor-HHS is in full Appropriations Committee

• Commerce-Justice-Science is in full Appropriations Committee
• Energy-Water pork is divvied up by Appropriations Committee

• Defense is in subcommittee
• Agriculture is in subcommittee

The Senate Appropriations Committee takes up Financial Services and HUD sometime this week

The federal government incurred a deficit of $123 billion for the first nine months of fiscal year 2007, CBO estimates, $83 billion less than the shortfall recorded during the same period in 2006. Revenues have risen by more than 7 percent, whereas outlays have grown by less than 3 percent. Both rates of growth are noticeably smaller than the rates of increase in fiscal years 2005 and 2006, which averaged about 13 percent for revenues and close to 8 percent for outlays.

(click on CBO logo for report)