As I’ve noted in a series of posts, there is often great confusion about the cost of the health bill being considered by Congress.

Yesterday, for example, many commentators were saying that the coverage expansions in the new House health bill would cost $894 billion over ten years, even though the actual cost is $1.055 trillion (according, as always, to the estimates of the Congressional Budget Office).

A second problem is confusion between (a) the cost of expanding coverage and (b) the overall cost of the bills. Expanding coverage is the key focus of each of the major health bills, but we should always keep in mind that the bills make other changes as well. In the case of the Baucus bill, for example, I estimated that other spending initiatives added about $75 billion, bringing its total cost to slightly more than $900 billion.

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