If you're in the camp of those of us who worry about the deficit, get up for a moment and stomp your feet. We finally have reason to cheer. Twelve Democratic senators and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman rose up last week with Senate Republicans and stopped their colleagues from passing along $250 billion in health care costs without a way to pay for them.

But let's not cheer too much. The battle's not won — especially in regard to Medicare cuts to health providers. Known as the "doc fix," this is one of the battlegrounds in Capitol Hill's health care fight.

Going back to 1997, Congress has tried since to trim the federal budget through paying doctors less for their Medicare services. But doctors have yelped, and legislators have mostly postponed the cuts that a complicated formula triggers.

Democratic congressional leaders finally decided to put an end to the cuts last week, but then the deficit-minded senators screwed up their courage. The elimination of the cuts was going to cost a big chunk, up to $250 billion over a decade. Unless their colleagues could make up the difference, the senators said, they weren't going to budge. Not with the deficit at $1.4 trillion and rising.

A collective sigh went out across the deficit camp. Maya MacGuineas, the deficit warrior who leads the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, was almost breathless over the phone last week. She didn't see that vote coming, she said happily.

But here's the first worry (the deficit camp worries well):

Last week's vote isn't the end of the story. Congress must revisit the "doc fix" issue later this year because doctors still are scheduled for a Medicare pay cut come January. And it's a steep one, about a 20 percent reduction.

If Congress follows through with it, the budget could be trimmed by $250 billion over the next decade. If lawmakers don't, the deficit could grow by that amount over that period.

I'm all for the senators rising up as one again. But the odds remain in favor of Congress backing off from the cut, especially since President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders desperately want the American Medical Association to keep backing health reform.

And that leads us to the second worry:

Both the House and Senate plan on paying for a significant chunk of their health reforms through . . . guess what? More cuts to medical providers for their Medicare work.

The Senate's leading bill would pay for about 20 percent of its reforms through such reductions. The House would finance about 15 percent of its bill through them.

Crazy stuff. Why should anyone believe Congress will make these cuts in the future when they haven't in the past?

The better option is to find a rock-solid way to finance an overhaul bill. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has outlined several ideas that Congress could use. For example, increasing Medicare's retirement age from 65 to 67 would raise $86 billion over 10 years. (For more options, go to usbudgetwatch.org.)

All these numbers can make the eyes glaze. But they are important. Without a sure way to pay for a health care plan, the deficit will begin to look like that out-of-control balloon that recently raced across Colorado.

Except this time, there will be no hoax. The deficit's at a perilous place, having reached its highest percentage of America's gross domestic product since World War II.

"We can't just blindly add billions to the debt," as MacGuineas says. "We are already hovering on the brink of a debt crisis."

The bottom line? Let's do health care, but let's not pay for it with gimmicks.

William McKenzie is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News.