The November 2nd Associated Press article by David Espo, AP sources: House health bill totals $1.2 trillion, is a great start at honest reporting on the true costs of the House health care bill. Espo reports:

The health care bill headed for a vote in the House this week costs $1.2 trillion or more over a decade, according to numerous Democratic officials and figures contained in an analysis by congressional budget experts, far higher than the $900 billion cited by President Barack Obama as a price tag for his reform plan.

While the Congressional Budget Office has put the cost of expanding coverage in the legislation at roughly $1 trillion, Democrats added billions more on higher spending for public health, a reinsurance program to hold down retiree health costs, payments for preventive services and more.

This is all true. As both Donald Marron and James Capretta have noted, the Democrats included billions of spending in the bill that are not included in the $1.055 trillion total including: $57 billion in increased payment rates for Medicaid, $34 billion for two new funds to finance prevention and wellness efforts, and $23 billion in extension of stimulus program that increases the federal share of Medicaid.

But Espo then also leaves out the $245 billion “doc fix” that everyone knows Congress will also pass. Commenting on the Senate’s attempt to leave the cost of the doc fix out of their bill, Robert Bixby, Director of the nonpartisan, grassroots Concord Coalition wrote:

Dealing with the ‘doc fix’ in a separate bill, outside of health care reform, would change the scoring of the bills but not the effect on the deficit. If policymakers believe that the current SGR [Sustainable Growth Rate] formula is unrealistic, they should replace it with a more appropriate policy and pay for the change in keeping with their pledge to reform health care in a deficit-neutral way. If paying for this SGR change means there would be fewer offsets on the table to pay for expanded coverage, then policymakers would be forced to appropriately weigh their priorities and make the necessary tough choices — either scale back other costs in the health reform package or find more ways to pay for the larger bill.

Adding the doc fix to the house health bill, the true total comes to $1.5 trillion.