The idea behind President Obama releasing his Health Care Proposal days ahead of his bi-partisan meeting with Republicans was that there would be transparency. Everyone could see it and see what he was suggesting.
Oh, well! There is not even enough legislative language to allow the Congressional Budget Office to figure out how much his proposal would cost. Of course, that wouldn’t be intentional, would it? Because “transparency” is the word being used repeatedly–wait, that’s right, “transparency” for health care was the very same word he used as he campaigned for his presidency back in 2008.
To quote the CBO:
This morning the Obama Administration released a description of its health care proposal, and CBO has already received several requests to provide a cost estimate for that proposal. We had not previously received the proposal, and we have just begun the process of reviewing it—a process that will take some time, given the complexity of the issues involved. Although the proposal reflects many elements that were included in the health care bills passed by the House and the Senate last year, it modifies many of those elements and also includes new ones. Moreover, preparing a cost estimate requires very detailed specifications of numerous provisions, and the materials that were released this morning do not provide sufficient detail on all of the provisions. Therefore, CBO cannot provide a cost estimate for the proposal without additional detail, and, even if such detail were provided, analyzing the proposal would be a time-consuming process that could not be completed this week. [bold mine]