A trillion here, a billion there, and pretty soon we’re talking real money. The House of Representatives has now passed its version of health care reform—a gargantuan 2,000-page, 70-pound collection of mandates, regulations, and subsidies that may well be among the most expensive pieces of legislation in U.S. history.

No single topic drives the health care reform debate like the number of uninsured Americans, variously numbered in speeches and ads at 45 million, 46 million, 47 million, or even 50 million. Unfortunately, most of what we think we know about the un insured is wrong. For the record, according to the latest figures from the Census Bureau, 45.6 million Americans currently lack health insurance. This is actually down slightly from the 47 million that were uninsured in 2006. However, those numbers don’t tell the whole story.