CBO Doesn't Even Have Details of Obama's Healthcare Proposal

Yesterday, I bitched about the fact that the White House release on the healthcare plan was only fluff, and not the actual proposal. I likened it to a McDonald's Happy Meal.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who can't make heads or tails out of what was released. Greg Mankiw writes:

By the way, according to CBO director Doug Elmendorf, the new administration proposal has too few details for the CBO to provide cost estimates.

This confirms my view that the release is a total scam. It's a Bernie Madoff type release. All flash, no facts. Be careful of any deal where the party proposing the deal won't show you the details. The details in this plan must be totalitarian as hell.

Here's what Elmendorf wrote:

Although the proposal reflects many elements that were included in the health care bills passed by the House and the Senate last year, it modifies many of those elements and also includes new ones. Moreover, preparing a cost estimate requires very detailed specifications of numerous provisions, and the materials that were released this morning do not provide sufficient detail on all of the provisions. Therefore, CBO cannot provide a cost estimate for the proposal without additional detail, and, even if such detail were provided, analyzing the proposal would be a time-consuming process that could not be completed this week.