You gotta love that quote from Rahm Emanuel: "I don't control the Congressional Budget Office." Right. That's why we don't know how much money single payer would save, right, Rahm?
This is such a freakin' joke. So far, we've spent $907.3 billion dollars on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - and that's just what they're admitting. They have money for just about anything else they want to do - except take care of the people who put them there.
You see how they're all running around like chickens with their heads cut off over this CBO report? Steny Hoyer promised he would get the CBO to score single payer but somehow, it never happened.
Gee, I wonder why? Because they knew what it would show - that single payer would cover everyone for what we're already paying.
(CBS/AP) Eye-popping new cost estimates for President Obama's plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system are forcing majority Democrats to scale back their plans to subsidize coverage for the uninsured.
The $1 trillion-plus estimates come as the Senate Health Committee prepares to meet Wednesday to begin crafting a bill around Mr. Obama's top legislative priority.
Big holes remain to be filled on the most controversial issues in the health care bill authored by the committee's chairman, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.: a new public insurance plan to compete with the private market, and whether employers must provide health care for their workers.
Of course, anything requiring employer-provided health care will further delay an economic recovery because health insurance is a business's biggest expense.
[...] Negotiations were roiled Monday by an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office that said Kennedy's bill would cost about $1 trillion over 10 years but leave 37 million people uninsured, compared with 50 million who are uninsured now.
Democrats called the numbers inconclusive, reported CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews, and even the CBO called its own report incomplete. But the sheer magnitude of what Congress is considering is undeniable.
"The news yesterday from the CBO is a turning point in the health-care debate," said Rep. Eric Cantor.
Yes, I could see that a report telling you that doing it the wrong way is more expensive would encourage you to further avoid doing it the right way!
Also on Tuesday, a cost estimate for the Finance Committee bill became public: $1.6 trillion. Senators quickly huddled on ways to bring down costs, with Baucus insisting the final price tag on the Finance Committee bill would be around $1 trillion.
At the Senate Health panel, officials said that after penciling in subsidies for families with incomes as high as $110,000, or 500 percent of the federal poverty level, they would limit the help to families up to $88,000 in income, or 400 percent of the poverty level.
