True cost of health care: $3 trillion

That’s $3,000,000,000,000.

The new number comes from Senator Judd Gregg and includes some funny math. You can read an explanation of that at HotAir.

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee today commented on the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) more detailed cost estimate of the manager’s amendment to the House health reform bill.

Senator Gregg stated, “The CBO estimate released last night finally sheds light on the smoke and mirrors game the majority has been playing with the cost of their health care reform proposal. Over the first 10 years, this legislation builds in gross new spending of $1.7 trillion – and most of the new spending doesn’t even start until 2014. Once that spending is fully phased in, the House Democratic bill rings up at more than $3 trillion over ten years.

As a side note, Heritage says $2.6 trillion.

Obviously, the real answer to how much health care reform will cost is: We don’t know. Including cuts to medicare and tax increases, it’s obvious that the plan will be expensive.

This is more than a Republican Party talking point, however. Spending this much money could have serious repercussions on the fiscal solvency of the federal government. Entitlements never get smaller. Social safety net programs, like Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security and now health care, only get bigger.

With that in mind, even if health care does lower the deficit over the next ten years and even if it only costs $1.2 trillion in that decade, what about the next ten years, or twenty?