If you already are insured, you will probably get less -- especially if you are a senior citizen on Medicare or covered by Medicaid.

The two programs, for older Americans and low-income people, cost $627 billion last year and accounted for 23 percent of all federal spending. With no change in existing law, the Congressional Budget Office says, that cost will double in 10 years and the programs will account for more than 30 percent of the budget.

Economists and health policy experts say the federal health programs are unsustainable in their current form, because they are growing much faster than the economy or the revenues used to finance them. The Medicare program is especially endangered; its hospital insurance trust fund is expected to run out of money in 11 years.

But the need for cutbacks is not a popular theme for political candidates wooing voters who want more care at a lower cost.

The Democrats do not say, in any detail, how they would slow the growth of Medicare and Medicaid or what they think about the main policy options: rationing care, raising taxes, cutting payments to providers or requiring beneficiaries to pay more.

So, Hillary and Barack, what are you going to do to Grandma and Great-Uncle Sid? Provide them less care? Make them pay more of their fixed incomes for medical treatment? Raise everyone's directly taxes to pay for them? Cut payments to medical providers so that the rest of us pay a hidden tax in terms of increased fees when we see a doctor? And how will you prevent these same pitfalls from entering into your universal health care schemes, bringing us higher costs or rationed medical care?

After all, the American people deserve to know before you sell us a bill of goods.