More on health care: cheaper and universal within 5 years

(Bob Cesca)
The House reform bill passes the CBO with flying colors. Not only does the bill qualify below the president's $900 billion price tag, but it also reduces the federal budget deficit by $104 billion over ten years, according to the official word from the CBO. That's better than the Senate Finance bill which only reduced the deficit by $81 billion.

From now until whenever, the Democrats ought to be repeating to everyone: We're the party of fiscal discipline. Why are the Republicans against reducing the deficit? I mean, why else jump through all of these CBO hurdles? Use it, people. Maybe use it against Joe Lieberman who wants to filibuster deficit reduction.

Adding... It's also worth mentioning that a "robust" public option would've made for a cheaper bill.

Jon Walker reports that access to the public option and the exchange will be universal within five years.

In theory, by 2015 all employers, and therefore all Americans not on Medicare or Medicaid, could start using the new health insurance exchange for health care. This would give nearly everyone the ability to choose the public option if they wanted.