(In another report issued Wednesday, the CBO concluded that the federal government's $1.4 trillion budget deficit in 2009 reached 9.9 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, the highest level since 1945.)
All of the Democratic Party's major health care bills would help more Americans get benefits by expanding Medicaid, the joint federal-state insurance program for the poor, and by creating highly regulated insurance marketplaces in which people could shop for insurance. Millions of those customers would qualify for government subsidies.
To offset the cost of those initiatives, Democrats have proposed a series of taxes, as well as reduced spending on Medicare, the federal government's insurance program for the elderly.
Baucus managed to restrain the cost of his bill in large part by offering less federal assistance to people who would be required to buy insurance than is contained in the more liberal legislation developed by House Democrats and by the Senate health committee.
But under pressure from liberal Democrats and some Republicans, the Senate Finance Committee has moved to expand aid for individuals and for small businesses to help them provide their workers with health benefits. The committee's bill also lowered the proposed penalties for those who do not comply with a new insurance mandate, and limited how many people would be subject to an excise tax on high-end - or so-called Cadillac - health plans.
The changes nonetheless did not add substantially to the cost of the legislation, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which estimated that Baucus' original proposal would have cost $774 billion over the next decade.
