The Congressional Budget Office released its estimates on the cost of Obama's healthcare plan. Just as expected, it wasn't pretty. Just as expected, the White House immediately backed away from the report. Now all of the sudden, this Dodd-Kennedy healthcare bill "is not the administration's bill," according to White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. Ok, so technically he is right. That's because the president does not propose legislation. But anyone that doesn't believe Obama's ideas and desires aren't reflected in this bill is full of horsesqueeze. So that's the latest excuse from the White House, the CBO figures don't really count because they calculated it based on a bill that was not Barack Obama's. Got it?

So what DID the CBO report show? Well for one, it estimated that this bill would cost over $1 trillion over the next ten years. The kicker is that this estimate doesn't even take into account the president's government-run health insurance plan. Not to mention the fact that the said goal of this bill is to provide health insurance to all Americans. The reality is that this Senate bill would only increase coverage for 16 million Americans. On top of that, the CBO estimates that millions of Americans would lose their current employer-provided health insurance.

The director of the CBO says, "...When fully implemented, about 39 million individuals would obtain coverage through the new insurance exchanges. At the same time, the number of people who had coverage through an employer would decline by about 15 million (or roughly 10 percent), and coverage from other sources would fall by about 8 million, so the net decrease in the number of people uninsured would be about 16 million or 17 million."

I wonder if that information will be covered on ABC's coverage of Obama's healthcare Townhall meeting?