F orget a tax cut, other than an immediate one-year stimulus that puts money into the hands of people earning less than $50,000 a year. Forget paying down the debt. Use the federal surplus for universal health insurance. Working families won't get much out of any tax cut, and debt elimination is foolish. But working families keenly need affordable health care, now more than ever. The dirtiest little secret about the Roaring Nineties is that average working families gained almost no income, while their health care costs soared. From 1986 through 1997 (the latest year for which detailed IRS data are available), the average income of the richest 1 percent of Americans rose 89 percent, to $517,713. During these same years, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans rose 1.6 percent, to $23,815. (These figures, not incidentally, are after all federal income taxes were paid.) Meanwhile, health care costs rose faster than inflation, hitting middle-income families especially...