From CNS News

The Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), claimed it posted the “full text” of its health care reform bill, “America’s Healthy Future Act,” on its Web site. But when users clicked the link to read the proposed law, they could only access a 259-page document that included summaries of both current law and the proposed legislation–or what some senators called a “plain English” version of the bill.
 
The actual “legislative language” of the bill–the words that would become the law of the land if the bill were enacted–is not available to the public and apparently has not even been written.

Nonetheless, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored the plain text summary of the bill on Oct. 7, cautiously estimating its cost at $829 billion. The members of the committee voted the bill out of the committee based on the summary on Tuesday, 14-9, picking up only one Republican vote, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine.

While the committee released a memorandum to reporters and  editors on Oct. 2 claiming had released the “full text of the America’s Healthy Future Act,” the link attached to the online version of the memorandum led to the summary–not an actual legislative text–and the CBO’s Oct. 7 “preliminary analysis” of the bill contradictng the committee’s claim that it had released the “full text.” 

“The Chairman’s mark, as amended, has not yet been converted into legislative language,” said the CBO. ”The review of such language could lead to significant changes in the estimates of the proposal’s effects on the federal budget and insurance coverage.”

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