[TheMercenary]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A compromise health care proposal widely seen as having the best chance to win Democratic and Republican support would cost $829 billion over the next 10 years, nonpartisan budget analysts concluded Wednesday.


It also would reduce the federal deficit by more than $80 billion, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office.

The review of the Senate Finance Committee's amended bill sets the stage for the next step in the politically charged debate over health care reform. Committee members have been waiting for the Budget Office's cost analysis before voting on their version of the bill.

The Finance Committee is the last of five congressional panels to consider health care legislation before debate begins in the full House and Senate.

The Budget Office's analysis differs slightly from Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus' estimate. Baucus, a Montana Democrat, had said the revised bill would cost roughly $900 billion.

Over the past two weeks, the Finance Committee has considered several hundred amendments to the sweeping bill. Committee members boosted the bill's overall price tag in part by voting to exempt senior citizens from higher taxes on medical expenses.

Before the amendments, the Budget Office projected that the committee's version of the bill would cost $774 billion; Baucus estimated that it would cost $856 billion.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/...are/index.html