Obama Care: The Real Cost Of Pelosi's Health Care Bill $1,055 Trillion

- The Real Cost of the Bill: According to the New York Times "Prescriptions" page, the real cost of the bil is $1,055 trillion.
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/a-health-care-bills-cost-the-reality/

What the Health Care Bill Really Costs
By David M. Herszenhorn AND Robert Pear

So what does the House health care bill really cost?

Throughout Thursday, news accounts, including our own, focused on $894 billion, the total cost given out by aides to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, before the official cost analysis was released by the Congressional Budget Office.

But a closer look at the budget office report suggests that the number everyone should have reported was $1.055 trillion, which is the gross cost of the insurance coverage provisions in the bill before taking account of certain new revenues, including penalties by individuals and employers who fail to meet new insurance requirements in the bill.

According to the budget office, the overall cost of the bill is more than offset by revenues from new taxes or cuts in spending by the government, resulting in a reduction in future budget deficits of $104 billion.

All of these figures cover a 10-year period from 2010 to 2019.

The $894 billion figure that was initially seized on was not chosen at random. It is featured prominently in the budget office report as the net cost of the insurance coverage provisions in the bill. But the net coverage cost is not the number that lawmakers, the news media and other experts and analysts have focused on in recent months.

For instance, the bill initially proposed by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, after months of negotiations with a bipartisan group of five other senators, was projected by the budget office to have a gross cost $774 billion.

After two weeks of public debate by the Finance Committee and votes on numerous amendments, the bill ended up with a projected gross cost of $829 billion. Both the $774 billion and $829 billion figures are comparable to the $1.055 trillion gross cost of the House measure.

In a news release shortly before House Democrats held a rally to unveil the bill, Ms. Pelosi’s office wrote: “The legislation’s coverage cost will be $894 billion over 10 years, fully paid for.” And in her speech at the event, Ms. Pelosi said: “It reduces the deficits, meets President Obama’s call to keep the cost under $900 billion over 10 years, and it insures 36 million more Americans.”

Aides to Ms. Pelosi defended their decision to focus on the $894 billion net figure. They also pointed out that in an “apples to apples” comparison — $1.055 trillion for the House bill vs. $829 billion for the Senate Finance measure — the House bill is projected to insure 7 million more people.

The budget office has projected that in 2019 the number of uninsured would be 18 million under the House bill, compared with 25 million under the Senate Finance Committee measure. A final Senate bill is still in the works. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, has not released details.

But a comparison of the net cost of the insurance provisions shows that the Senate Finance bill would be much cheaper: $518 billion compared to the $894 billion trumpeted by Ms. Pelosi’s office.

Nasdaq reports the same number:
http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=200910291728dowjonesdjonline000980&title=cbo-puts-house-health-bill-total-cost-at-1055-trillion


CBO Puts House Health Bill Total Cost At $1.055 Trillion


By Martin Vaughan, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday a U.S. House health-care system re-write would extend health insurance to 96% of the nonelderly U.S. population by 2019, and spend $1.055 trillion to do so.

Penalties imposed on individuals who did not purchase insurance, and employers who did not offer coverage to their workers, would raise $161 billion over that time-frame. That brings the net cost of the bill to $894 billion through 2019, CBO said.

House Democrats have seized on that net cost figure to claim that their bill is below President Barack Obama's upper limit which he set for health-care legislation of $900 billion.

The $1.055 trillion estimate also does not include $245 billion needed to stop Medicare payments to doctors from decreasing, which the House plans to address through separate legislation introduced Thursday.

The costs of the bill are fully offset by cuts to existing spending programs-- including the Medicare Advantage and other programs--saving $426 billion through 2019, and by tax increases raising $572 billion over that time, CBO said. In fact, the combined impact of provisions in the bill would be a net deficit reduction of $104 billion in the next decade, according to CBO.

CBO also said the House bill would not add to the deficit in the first decade beyond 2019--a key condition for support from fiscally conservative House Democrats.

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf, in a Thursday letter to House Democratic Chairmen, cautioned that his estimates are preliminary and "subject to substantial uncertainty."

House leaders capped weeks of internal negotiations among Democrats today by unveiling the sweeping legislation. They aim to bring the bill to a vote by the full House by the end of next week.

The bill would create exchanges where people who do not have access to health insurance from their employer could buy coverage. It would create a government- sponsored plan to compete with private plans.

The bill would reduce the number of uninsured in the U.S. by 36 million by 2019. By that time, 30 million people would be covered through the insurance exchanges, of which 6 million would be covered by the public option.

An expansion in eligibility rules for the Medicaid program would bring an additional 15 million enrollees to Medicaid by 2019, CBO said.

Finally The Drudge Report proclaims in headline, this is a whopping $2.2 million per word.