In political debates, Governor Spitzer often strikes back at his opponents by reciting Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s witty remark about how people are entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts. But an erroneous assertion made by Mr. Spitzer and his communications team on public health insurance for children suggests the governor himself ought to heed the late senator’s advice.

In an op-ed published in the Daily News on Tuesday and in a press release yesterday, Mr. Spitzer claims that new regulations handed down by the Bush administration that restrict the expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program will deny health insurance coverage to 400,000 children in New York.

In reality, the regulations will have a much smaller impact, according to state health officials. In April, state lawmakers passed legislation increasing the income eligibility cap for New York’s Schip program to 400% of the poverty level from 250%, extending coverage to about 60,000 to 70,000 children. Schip is a program that offers health care to children whose families earn too much to qualify for Medicaid.

Under the regulations issued by the Bush administration, New York would be prohibited from raising the Schip family income cap for the time being, which means that 60,000 to 70,000 children who would have been eligible for public coverage are still ineligible.

The 400,000 figure is actually the state’s estimate of the number of uninsured children in New York. Of those children, a little more than 80% are currently eligible for public health coverage. On Monday, in response to a reporter’s question, Mr. Spitzer even acknowledged that the number of children affected by the regulations was fewer than 400,000. “You’re talking about 70,000 kids in the state of New York whose health care is at risk. That’s an enormous number,” he said.

Even so, Mr. Spitzer’s opinion article was published the following day using the incorrect number: “There are 400,000 uninsured children in New York. To put this in perspective, if they were to gather in one place, they would form the second-largest city in the state — larger than Rochester, Albany, and Binghamton combined. To deny coverage to these children is not only morally wrong, it is profoundly bad public policy,” Mr. Spitzer wrote in the Daily News.

In addition, Mr. Spitzer has repeatedly cited the 400,000 figure in the last few days in appearances aimed at building political and public opposition to the new rules, which threaten to derail his high-profile effort to extend public health insurance to children in families with incomes higher than the federal cut-off for Medicaid.

Yesterday, his administration sent reporters a release about a press conference the governor held with Senator Clinton in Manhattan to denounce the federal regulations: “Governor Eliot Spitzer and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today called on President George W. Bush to remove burdensome rules instituted by his administration to deny 400,000 New York children health care,” the statement said. A spokeswoman for Mr. Spitzer, Christine Anderson, said the 400,000 number was a “typo.” She noted that a press release from Monday had the accurate figure. The administration had not released a corrected version as of yesterday evening.

While Mr. Spitzer’s article may have exaggerated the impact of the regulations, state health officials insist that extending coverage to children in higher-income families will encourage lower-income parents to get their children enrolled.

“The most effective way to reach our lowest-income children is through a ‘cover-all children’ policy,” the state’s Medicaid director, Deborah Bachrach, said.