The CBO reports that, in their true first 10 years, the House bill would cost $1.8 trillion, and the Senate bill would cost $1.7 trillion. Pelosi would raise Americans' taxes by $1.1 trillion over that period, while Reid would hike them by $1 trillion.
And the House bill would siphon about $800 billion from Medicare to spend it elsewhere, while the Senate bill would suck out about $900 billion.
So, the bills would either sock older Americans by taking huge sums of money from Medicare -- or hit future generations with huge tax hikes to cover the shortfall.
Whether it's our grandparents or our grandchildren, someone is going to pay.
To give an idea of how much $1.7 (or $1.8) trillion is, let's compare it to private insurance companies' profits. The 10 largest insurance companies in America (according to the Fortune 500) last year had combined profits of $8 billion. You could double that, and it still would be less than 1 per cent of $1.7 trillion.
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