"Well, a 16-minute discussion on health care is certainly a start," dapper anchorman and occasional debate moderator Brian Williams said in Cleveland last night, cutting off Clinton and Obama's long back-and-forth on their health care plans.

Given yesterday's report that federal spending on health care is likely to double in the next decade, we'd have loved to hear some real nitty gritty about what the candidates are going to do to control costs. But given that the obvious ways to rein them in are politically toxic -- "As...