CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf and study author Phil Ellis testified before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) on the new draft of the Kennedy health care legislation today. The old version of the bill was estimated to cost $1 trillion over 10 years and would insure only one third of the 47 million uninsured Americans. This version, which includes language for a government-run option, would cost substantially less, at $597 billion, and insure a far larger number of those currently uninsured. But neither version accounts for likely expansion of Medicaid, which the CBO estimates would cost an additional $500 billion for the feds, and likely much more for the states:
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