This morning the Senate Finance Committee began to mark up the Baucus health-care legislation. (They’re scheduled to resume at 2:45 p.m.) Democrats are obviously trying to create a sense of urgency regarding health care reform. This was the theme of Sen. John Kerry’s (D., Mass.) remarks this morning, but it was Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D., Mich.) who really drove the point home.

“Every six seconds someone loses their health insurance,” she claimed. Stabenow further said “14,000 Americans wake up with health insurance and go to bed without it.” President Obama has cited this same statistic along with numerous Democrats. In fact, just yesterday Rep. Bobby Scott (D., Va.) trotted out the same number at a health-care forum in Richmond, Virginia.

So in other words, over 15+ million Americans are going to lose their health care between now and when the major reforms of the Baucus bill take effect in 2013, which represents an increase in the number of the nation’s uninsured by about 50 percent. (That’s assuming we use the number of uninsured Obama cited in his recent speech before congress — it’s been a moving target.)

Meanwhile, billions of dollars worth of taxes “fees” on medical devices and other health services in the Baucus bill are scheduled to kick in sometime next year. (I haven’t seen a good tally of these fees — but the bill is full of them, including $4 billion annually on medical device manufactures, $2 billion annually on pharma companies, $750 million on clinical laboratories and $6 billion annually from insurers.) So on one hand, Democrats are insisting there is a crisis demanding that their proposed health-care reforms be approved now. On the other hand, by their own logic they are delaying when those reforms start, letting millions go uninsured in the meantime. This allows Democrats to frontload the collection of billions of dollars in federally imposed fees — money that goes a long way toward their claim the bill is fiscally responsible and the reforms are essentially revenue neutral over the next ten years. It’s this fiscal prestidigitation that makes the bill more saleable politically.

This all seems staggeringly disingenuous, no?