Health-Care Bill to Cut Deficit by $130B

All the dominoes are falling into place for a vote on health-care reform: Democrats are touting the results of the Congressional Budget Office's report on the expected costs and benefits health-care reform. The report shows the bill costing $940 billion over 10 years, but, by increasing revenue and cutting costs, the bill will actually lead to a $130 billion reduction in the deficit over 10 years. Over the next 10 years, it will reduce the deficit by an addition $1.2 trillion. It will also extend coverage to 32 million currently uninsured Americans, so that 95 percent of the legal population will have health insurance. Ezra Klein points out that this is more deficit reduction than both earlier versions of the House and Senate bills, and more coverage than the Senate bill.