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Today the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a cost scoring of the latest health care reform legislation (H.R. 3962) introduced by the Majority yesterday as costing taxpayers $1.055 trillion dollars, $150 billion above the cost of the bill stated by the Speaker just yesterday morning. Also, the CBO cost estimate excludes another $250 billion for Medicare physician fee fix which will be addressed in another bill. CBO also states that their estimate is “subject to substantial uncertainty.”

“The size and cost of their proposals has grown from $900 billion to $1.3 trillion in less than 24 hours,” said Congressman Bill Posey (R-Rockledge). “I am very concerned that the Majority is likely to move this bill forward absent a full and accurate cost estimate. We need a full legislative review of this new 1,990 page bill that was just released yesterday. Many of the provisions won’t take effect for several years, so there is no need to rush this bill to the House floor. Let’s take the time to understand what we are doing and get this right.”

Furthermore the CBO has not completed a comprehensive estimate of the discretionary costs such as funding for a variety of agencies that would be responsible for implementing H.R. 3962, including funds for the IRS ($10 billion), HHS ($10 billion), and grant programs and other changes in Divisions C and D. Late last week the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a study stating that the proposed reforms would actually increase the overall cost of health care spending rather than reduce the cost, moving in the opposite direction of one of the stated goals of the Majority.