The 15-million question

Candidates (and reporters) often throw around numbers without telling people where they come from. Fifteen million is one you may be hearing a lot lately in the presidential campaign. It's the estimate Hillary Clinton uses for how many people would still lack coverage under Barack Obama's health care plan, which--unlike hers and John Edwards'--does not include a so-called "individual mandate" requiring people who don't get health insurance from their employers to go out and buy it, with generous subsidies for those who could not afford it.

Here, the New Republic's Jonathan Cohn (who was one of the first to use that number and whose book I have written about before here) desconstructs the estimate, reconsiders it and decides, yes, it's probably right. He promises to take a look next at Obama's claim: That his plan still covers more than people Clinton's or Edwards'.