Now we get to see if the left's projections about O-Care were right

Some estimates bear those optimistic figures out; others emphatically do not. But if the bill passes, we won’t have to rely on projections. American life expectancy will either leap upward, vindicating the bill’s supporters, or it won’t.

Likewise, liberals are convinced that reform will cut the deficit, rather than increase it. This conviction depends on two big assumptions: that Congress will actually slash Medicare payments, no matter the howls of outrage that ensue, and that the “Cadillac tax” on high-value plans, currently postponed till 2018, won’t end up being put off again, again and again into eternity.

Right now, these assumptions are hotly contested between left and right. But if the bill passes, by 2018 we’ll find out who’s right…

It will shed light, as well, on all other promises that piled up as the health care vote drew near — that the bill, its implicit abortion subsidies notwithstanding, will actually reduce the abortion rate, as T.R. Reid argued last week in the Washington Post; that it will create 400,000 new jobs “almost immediately,” as Pelosi recently claimed; that it will become more popular once implemented, as every Democrat insists; and so on through an array of happy possibilities.

The same goes for all the things that liberals are sure won’t happen.