Why does MSNBC keep reporting the House Healthcare Bill...

will cost $1.5 Trillion when the cost is really $1 Trillion?

Contact MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10285339/

http://mediamatters.org/blog/200907150043

From where is the AP getting $1.5 trillion?

July 15, 2009 7:15 pm ET by Matt Gertz


In an article that is burning up the tubes, the Associated Press' Erica Werner reported today that the House Democrats' tri-committee health-care reform proposal would cost "$1.5 trillion." Where does that figure come from? Werner doesn't break it down.

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released a preliminary analysis scoring "specifications... reflected" in the bill released the same day. That analysis pegged those specs at a cost of a little over $1 trillion. The CBO went out of its way to point out that their estimates "are based on specifications provided by the tri-committee group rather than an analysis of the language released"; there are provisions included in the bill that the CBO did note include in their analysis.

So where did the AP's $1.5 trillion figure come from? Well, AP reports that "a House Democratic aide said the total bill would add up to about $1.5 trillion over 10 years." So Werner got an anonymous source to give her a figure, and with no indication in her article that she consulted anyone inside or outside Congress to confirm that number, reported it as fact. Where is the extra $500 billion coming from on top of the CBO score? What provisions did the CBO not score? Why does this anonymous aide think those provisions cost half a trillion dollars? Does anyone else agree with him or her? Readers wouldn't know from the AP article.

I guess an annual cost of $100B doesn't sound big enough to try to scare people off. All these 5 year/10 year cost estimates are gimmicks.

The 10 year $1.5 T estimate is probably a worst case RW talking point. Gee, that's FIFTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS over 100 years!

and there is something that you REALLY want to buy. When you tell your partner about it, you say that it is ONLY $10. but when your partner wants something that you don't want them to get, you will say it is $11, because it is really $10.99. So, because they don't want the healthcare bill or any sort of reform that might actually benefit, oh, say... the public and consumers, then they are going to lie, misrepresent and do whatever they can to make it look bad.

Associated Press Continues To Insist Dem Health Care Bill Costs $1.5 Trillion

By Brian Beutler - July 16, 2009, 8:52AM

Yesterday, we noticed something strange about the Associated Press' coverage of the House's health care bill unveiling. A preliminary Congressional Budget Office analysis pegged the price of that legislation at about $1 trillion, and by and large, that's how reporters characterized the cost of the bill. But not the AP, which, relying seemingly on the good faith of an anonymous Democratic aide, said the bill would actually cost $1.5 trillion. Soon, Newt Gingrich picked up that ball and ran with it, and Democratic health care leaders and their aides were fuming.

But that hasn't stopped AP, which is at it again. "Votes were planned Thursday in the Education and Labor and Ways and Means committees on a $1.5 trillion plan that majority House Democrats presented this week," reports Erica Werner. As I reported Monday, the first part of that sentence is true. The second part, however, is not.

So what's going on over at Ron Fournier's shop?

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/associated-press-continues-to-insist-dem-health-care-bill-costs-15-trillion.php